IP Addressing and Subnetting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

IP Addressing and Subnetting - Essay Example These identifiers are the one referred to as the internet protocols which are numerical figures that identifies a device connected to a network. IP addressing therefore means assigning these figures to a device so that it can be identified. On the other hand a sub network, also known as subnet is a sub division of an IP network, which makes sub netting to be the division of an IP network (Blank 2004). There exists two main versions of internet protocol which include internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) and internet protocol version 6 (IPv6).since these versions contain an endless pools of numbers, for IPv4, this pool of numbers is 32 bits written as (232) and contains 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses, where bits refer to a digit in the form of binary system which is used in storing information. For IPv6 version, it has 128-bits written as (2128) containing 340,282,366,920,938,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IPv6 addresses. These two versions are assigned to a given network in different sizes. The size assigned is shown after an oblique, and it reflects the number of IP addresses contained in it. The lower the number after the oblique the more the number of addresses the protocol size has (Groth 2005). Since an internet protocol is made up of 32 binary bits, they are subdivided into network and host sections. The network portion identifies the particular network that it is connected to whereas the host portion identifies a node, be it a computer, on the local area network (LAN). This is aided by the use of subnet mask, which is described as a 32 binary bits combination that is these octets used to show which section or portion of an IP address refers to a subnet and the other tat refers to the host. The 32 binary bits are subdivided onto octets where octet holds 8 bits making a total of four octets. These octets are then turned into decimals and separated by a period. This is why an IP address is expressed in decimal with dots in between. The number of decimal in each oct et ranges from 0-255 decimals or 00000000-11111111 binary (Groth 2005). As indicated above, a subnet mask helps to know which section of the internet protocol identifies a given network and the section of the IP that identifies the nodes. If we have a network with a natural mask of 255.0.0.0 which has not been sub netted, it would have an address close to 8.20.15.1255.0.0.0.converting these addresses and masks to binary numbers, and we would have 8.20.15.1 = 00001000.00010100.00001111.00000001 255.0.0.0 = 11111111.00000000.00000000.00000000 There different types of IP addressing and each have their own features. One of the forms includes the unicast. This is the most used concept of internet protocol addressing for both IPv4 and IPv6.it is used to refer to a single sender and a single receiver which could be used for sending and receiving. A unicast address is usually for a single host. Different devices have different unique unicast addresses, each with a different unique purpose. This means that for a person to data to many unicast addresses, he is required to send it many times to each recipient. The second type of IP address is the broadcast. Only IPv4 implements the broadcast addressing since IPv6 replaces broadcast with multicast addressing. For the IPv4, it is with ease to send data to all hosts. In the IPv4 address the address 255.255.255.255 is used to broadcast. The third type of addressing is the multicast addressing. Multicast address is linked with a group of recipient. For IPv4 addresses, given addresses 224.0.0.0