IP and the Internet Page 1 of 4

IP and the Internet

 Internet is the single biggest Internetwork covering the entire globe. It uses TCP/IP as a network
protocol and hence each host interface involved in the network needs to have a unique and valid
address.
 Internet is a network of networks (With each network having its own unique network ID).
 In order to keep the uniqueness in assigning IP addresses to all the hosts in the Internet, the Internet
management bodies established the InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center) which later
incorporated under IANA (Internet Authority for Number Assignment). Both these organs are now
organized under ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
 The InterNIC assigns Network IDs for all the networks in the Internet. Just like any Network ID, these
assigned addresses do have bits fixed by the InterNIC and bits left aside for local administration. This is
dictated by the default subnet mask associated with the Network IDs. The locally administered bits in
each network will be used
 For host interface addressing
 For subnetting (further segmentation of the network into smaller subnets

InterNIC used a class based (also called the classful) address assignment for all the networks within the
Internet. With class based IP address assignment, the subnet mask will be automatically fixed based on the
first octet value (if one considers the address in the dotted decimal notation) or by looking at some of the bits
in the beginning of the address.

These classes are:

 Classes A to C – available for the public internet
 Class D – Multicast Addressing
 Class E – left for IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) for research.

IP addresses entertained in the internet are called public addresses. InterNIC left aside private IP address ranges in
order to ensure IP address reusability in private networks. These private addresses should use a mechanism to
share one or more public addresses. By doing so, one can guarantee the use of few public addresses to be shared
among very many hosts within a “private” network.

Private Public
Network Internet

Public IP
Share of public IP address is possible through the use of some mechanism such as
 Proxy: mainly deployed with software
 NAT (Network Address Translation): capability embedded in Routers to translate
“internal” network addresses to “public” IP addresses and vice versa.

Class A – First octet values 1 to 126

0AAAAAAA. LLLLLLLL.LLLLLLLL.LLLLLLLL
A = bits assigned by InterNIC
L= bits that are locally administered by each network for host interface addressing and subnetting

Subnet Mask = 255.0.0.0 (/8)

Number of class A network = 126
Number of valid addresses per Network = 224-2 (approximately 16milion)
Special Cases:
 The class A network Id 127.0.0.0 is left aside as a loop back address, and it is illegal to assign a host
interface form this Network ID. For example, 127.0.0.1 is refereed to as the local host.
IP and the Internet Page 2 of 4
 Private Network IDs – InterNIC left aside One Class A address as a private address for ensuring address
reusability in networks outside of the public Internet. These address is 10.0.0.0.

Examples of valid public Class A Network addresses:

1.0.0.0, 9.0.0.0, 100.0.0.0 etc….

Class B – First octet values 128 to 191

10AAAAAA.AAAAAAAA.LLLLLLLL.LLLLLLLL
A = bits assigned by InterNIC
L= bits that are locally administered by each network for host interface addressing and subnetting

Subnet mask = 255.255.0.0 (/16)

Number of Class B networks = 214 (Approximately 16 thousand)
Number of valid addresses per network = 216-2 =65,534
Special Cases:
 Private Network IDs – InterNIC left aside 16 Class B addresses as private addresses for ensuring address
reusability in networks outside of the public Internet. These addresses are 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.0.0 (
equivalent to 172.16.0.0/12 – notice how we combine addresses using Supernetting in later sections)

 The Class B Network ID 169.254.0.0 is used to assign APIPAs (Automatically Assigned Private IP Addressing) for
host interfaces in the absence of a DHCP server (a service that allows automatic assignment of IP addresses).
This helps interfaces to have “Zero Configuration” and directly acquire an IP Address. Even though it is not
recommended, addresses from this Network can be used as valid addresses in Private Networks.

Examples of valid public Class B Network addresses:

1148.255.0.0, 188.25.0.0, 144.99.0.0 etc….

Class C – First octet values 192 to 223

110AAAAA.AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA.LLLLLLLL
A = bits assigned by InterNIC
L= bits that are locally administered by each network for host interface addressing and subnetting

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 (/24)

Number of class C network = 221 (Approximately 2million)
Number of valid addresses per Network is 28-2=254
Special Cases:
 Private Network IDs – InterNIC left aside 256 Class C addresses as private addresses for ensuring address
reusability in networks outside of the public Internet. These addresses are 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.0 (
equivalent to 192.168.0.0/16 – notice how we combine addresses using Supernetting in later sections)
Examples of valid public Class C Network addresses:
213.55.64.0, 201.255.255.0, 199.200.254.0 etc….

The above three classes are the ones that are available for the Public Internet. There are additional two classes
serving other purposes. These two classes have first octet values between 224 and 255. Generally, IP address
values given as host interfaces could not have an address taken from this range.

Class D – First octet values 224 -239

1110AAAA.AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA
(no idea of Subnet Mask as there is no distinction of network bits and host bits)
These are range of addresses used for multicast communication.

Class E – First octet 240 -255

The addresses in this class are left aside for research.
IP and the Internet Page 3 of 4

Problems with class based IP address assignment

The Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. This is reflected in the tremendous popularity of the World
Wide Web (WWW), the opportunities that businesses see in reaching customers from virtual storefronts, and the
emergence of new ways of doing business. It is clear that expanding business and public awareness will continue to
increase demand for access to resources on the Internet.
Over the past few years, the Internet has experienced two major scaling issues as it has struggled to provide
continuous and uninterrupted growth:
 The eventual exhaustion of IP version 4 (IPv4) address space
 The need to route traffic between the ever increasing number of networks that comprise the Internet

The first problem is concerned with the eventual depletion of the IP address space. IPv4 defines a 32-bit address
which means that there are only 232 (4,294,967,296) IPv4 addresses available. As the Internet continues to grow,
this finite number of IP addresses will eventually be exhausted.

The address shortage problem is aggravated by the fact that portions of the IP address space have not been
efficiently allocated. Also, the traditional model of classful addressing does not allow the address space to be used
to its maximum potential. The Address Lifetime Expectancy (ALE) Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) has expressed concerns that if the current address allocation policies are not modified, the Internet
will experience a near to medium term exhaustion of its unallocated address pool. If the Internet’s address supply
problem is not solved, new users may be unable to connect to the global Internet. More than half of all possible
IPv4 addresses have been assigned to ISPs, corporations, and government agencies, but only an estimated 69
million addresses are actually in use.
Here below is a summarization of the problems associated with the IP version 4 class based (classful) addressing.
 Inefficient assignment of addressing
o Unfair distribution of addresses
 For example the 126 Class A Networks gets half of the available address space (which is
approximately 2Billion addresses) while 2 million Class C networks only gets 0.5 billion
addresses (only 1/8th of the total address space)
o Unnecessary wastage of valid addresses
 For example, if a company needs 5,000 addresses for its single network, the address class
that will be assigned to it is class B, and hence wastage of approximately 60,000 rather
useful addresses.
 The only available Network IDs now are Class C, which are too small to accommodate the need of even the
smallest networks.
 Therefore, InterNIC is forced to assign multiple Class C addresses for requesting
entities to fulfill their address requirement. This will create an overhead to the
internet routers because every Network ID should be introduced.
 Without changing the class based concept, it is impossible to combine these
smaller networks to come up with a bigger single Network ID (through a
technique known as super netting).
 During subnetting (a technique of segmenting networks into smaller subnets) for class based addresses, it
is illegal to use all zero or all one subnet bits, because there will be a conflict between Network IDs and
Broadcast IDs of the child and parent networks, respectively. And hence, wastage of important valid
addresses for the sake of broadcast segmentation (subnetting).

The Solution: Classless Approach - CIDR

By 1992, the exponential growth of the Internet was raising serious concerns among members of the IETF about
the ability of the Internet’s routing system to scale and support future growth. These problems were related to:
 The near-term exhaustion of the Class B network address space
 The rapid growth in the size of the global Internet’s routing tables
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 The eventual exhaustion of the 32-bit IPv4 address space

Throughout the Internet’s growth, the first two problems listed became critical and the response to these
immediate challenges was the development of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). The third problem, which is
of a more long-term nature, is currently being explored by the IP Next Generation (IPng or IPv6) working group of
the IETF.

CIDR supports two important features that benefit the global Internet routing system:
 CIDR eliminates the traditional concept of Class A, Class B, and Class C network addresses.
 CIDR supports route aggregation where a single routing table entry can represent the address space of
thousands of traditional classful routes. This allows a single routing table entry to specify how to route
traffic to many individual network addresses. Route aggregation helps control the amount of routing
information in the Internet’s backbone routers, reduces route flapping (rapid changes in route
availability), and eases the local administrative burden of updating external routing information.

Without the rapid deployment of CIDR in 1994 and 1995, the Internet routing tables would have excessive classful
routes and the Internet would probably not be functioning today.

CIDR eliminates the traditional concept of Class A, Class B, and Class C network addresses and replaces them with
the generalized concept of a network prefix. Routers use the network prefix, rather than the first octet of the IP
address, to determine the dividing point between the network number and the host number. As a result, CIDR
supports the deployment of arbitrarily sized networks rather than the standard 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit network
numbers associated with classful addressing.
In the CIDR model, each piece of routing information is advertised with a bit mask (or prefix length). The prefix
length is a way of specifying the number of leftmost contiguous bits in the network portion of each routing table
entry. For example, a network with 20 bits of network number and 12 bits of host number would be advertised
with a 20-bit prefix length (/20). The IP address advertised with the /20 prefix could be a former Class A, Class B, or
Class C address. Routers that support CIDR do not make assumptions based on the first octet of the address; they
rely on the prefix length information provided with the route.

Generally,
 The classless approach dictate the use of a slash x (/x) subnet mask for determining where the
network bits ended and the host bits begin, where x varies form 1 to 31, inclusive and no
restriction to the first octet value (as long as it is between 1 and 223, inclusive).
 The number of networks with a /x subnet mask is 2x .
 Number of valid addresses per network equals 232-x – 2.

/x Number of Networks Valid Addresses per Network

/1 2 231-2
/2 4 230-2
/3 8 229-2
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
/10 10
2 =1024 222-2
. . .
. . .
. . .
/30 230 2
/31 231 0