
Interim Summary – IPv4 Addresses
Interim Summary – IPv4 Addresses 관련
In this section, you've learned about IPv4 addresses. IP addresses are hierarchical, logical addresses that consist of 4
bytes. IP addresses have two parts: a network identifier that belongs to all hosts in the network, and a host identifier which identifies the specific host in the network.
You've explored various options for determining the network identifier and the host identifier:
- Fixed-length approach – too rigid and limited
- Classful addressing approach – better but still wasteful
- CIDR (Classless Interdomain Routing) – flexible and efficient
CIDR provides much more flexibility and helps overcome the significant problem of IPv4 address shortage. However, CIDR is only one part of addressing the shortage of IPv4 addresses, with other solutions including NAT (Network Address Translation) and eventually, IPv6. The next section will explore special IPv4 addresses and then examine the header of IPv4 packets.