IP Addressing and classifications
Those number1.number2.number3.number4 way of accessing a machine or URL or when you ping a site what you see, yeah you are right the IP address, ever wondered why that format and what it signifies and how does it work? The number is decimal representation of each byte in the 4 bytes (that is why the range of IP address can be in the combination of 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 ) that is used to store a machine address. In that case do you think we can connect to a machine using a complete decimal representation of the 4 bytes? Why don’t we try it? Let’s try to access google.com using a decimal representation. First get the IP address of google.com by pinging it in your shell. The IP I got was from the Google server in India ( google.co.in) which is 64.233.189.104. Let’s take each number here and convert it into binary. Remember to pad zeros in the left if the number does not translate to 8 bits. Use scientific calculator mode in XP and it will help conversion easy. So here is the binary representation of each number.
64 - 01000000
233 - 11101001
189 - 10111101
104 - 01101000
Now combine the binary above together as 32 bits which gives 1000000111010011011110101101000. Now translate this back to decimal which is 1089060200. Now to verify that if this number will take you to Google why don’t you click this link http://1089060200. I got the Google India search page! So each of that byte has significance and can determine the IP class. Learn more about “The IP Address and Classes“.
