Designing and Implementing Linux Firewalls and QoS using netfilter, iproute2, NAT, and L7-filter

IP Addressing, IP Subnetting, and IP Supernetting

The Internet Protocol (IP) found at OSI Layer 3 is responsible for end-to-end delivery of data between computers in an IP network (the Internet). To find a path between two computers in a large network such as the Internet, computers must be uniquely identified. To do that, the Internet Protocol defines IP Addresses, which are unique 32 bit sequences of one and zeros.

For example, 11000000101010000000000100000001 is a valid IP address. For the ease of use, IP addresses are represented in a form called the dotted decimal format. The 32 bits of the IP address are grouped in 4 bytes delimited by dots and transformed into the decimal form because it is simpler to use decimal number instead long sequences ...