Network Routing, 2nd Edition

Appendix B

Miscellaneous Topics

If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on 'em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route.

Malcolm Forbes

B.1 Binary and Hexadecimal Numbers

We are all used to the decimal numbers as long as we can probably remember. In computers and electronic transmission, numbers are represented in the binary form. For compactness in representation, hexadecimal representation is also commonly used. Decimals are then base 10, binaries are base 2, and hexadecimals are base 16. Now, as you can see, a hexadecimal number can be from 0 to 15 in decimal values. Thus, to represent 10 in decimal as a hexadecimal ‘digit’, letter ‘A’ is used ; similarly, 11, ...