2.1. Addressing
To build a global network, it is necessary to identify every host on the network. The Internet achieves this by assigning each host at least one 32-bit-long unique Internet address (IP address). Typically, IP addresses are written in decimal dotted notation where each decimal number represents 8 bits in the address. For example, the IP address of www.att.com, which is 11000000 00010100 00000011 00110110, is written as 192.20.3.54.
If IP addresses were assigned randomly, routing between hosts would be extremely difficult. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, the functionality of a router is to forward datagrams received by the router toward the datagram's destination. We discuss IP routing in more detail in Section 2.3. However, in the ...
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