TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols, 2nd Edition

2. The Internet Address Architecture

2.1. Introduction

This chapter deals with the structure of network-layer addresses used in the Internet, also known as IP addresses. We discuss how addresses are allocated and assigned to devices on the Internet, the way hierarchy in address assignment aids routing scalability, and the use of special-purpose addresses, including broadcast, multicast, and anycast addresses. We also discuss how the structure and use of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses differ.

Every device connected to the Internet has at least one IP address. Devices used in private networks based on the TCP/IP protocols also require IP addresses. In either case, the forwarding procedures implemented by IP routers (see Chapter 5) use IP addresses to ...