Inside Solaris™ 9

IP Addressing (IPv4)

In IP version 4, each host on the TCP/IP network has a 32-bit network address—referred to as the IP address—that is unique for each host on the network. If the host will participate on the Internet, this address must also be unique to the Internet. For this reason, Internet IP addresses are controlled by an administrative agency, such as InterNIC.

The IP address is a sequence of four bytes and is written in the form of four decimal integers separated by periods (for example, 0.0.0.0). Each integer is 8 bits long and ranges from 0 to 255. The IP address consists of two parts: a network ID assigned by the InterNIC administrative agency and the host ID assigned by the local administrator. The first integer of the address (0.0.0.0) ...