Contents

IP Addressing Overview............................................................................................................................................ 1
IP Characteristics and IPv4 Address Format................................................................................................... 3

IP Addressing Overview
In this video we're going to look at IP version 4 addressing. I'm going to give you an
overview of IP version 4 addresses and explain the basics of IPv4 addressing.
From now on, I'm going to refer to IP addresses but be a way of please that I'm discussing
IP version 4 addresses in this video and not IP version 6 addresses.

 We're going to look at an overview of IP addresses, what they looked like and how
they function.
 I'm going to explain the various address classes that you get an IP version 4.
 In other words, Class A,
 Class B,
 Class C,
 Class D and
 Class E.
 We'll also talk about CIDR, and how that changes the address classes. But as a
foundation it's important that you understand the 5 address classes A, B, C, D
and E.
 We will look at special IP addresses including the loopback address the local
broadcast address and other special addresses.
 And lastly I'm going to explain what network mask do and why they important with
regards to IP addressing.
So, what is an IP address?
 An IP address is a layer 3 logical address assigned by an administrator. Unlike MAC
addresses which are hard coded or burnt into Network Interface Cards by the
manufacturer. An IP address is configured by an administrator. The IP address may
change within a subnet. For example, when using DHP or Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol.
 An IP address resides at a layer 3 in the OSI model. Please refer to the OSI videos for
more details on how the OSI model works.
 An IP address is used to uniquely identify a device on the network and is used by
routers to determine where that device is. So, a router routes traffic to a destination
IP address based on a hierarchy of network and host which will talk about in a
moment.

 So once again the IP address uniquely identifies a device in a network in a similar

way to how houses are uniquely identified in Street. Houses in the street have a
unique address.
 So, for example 10 Oxford Street, in the same way a host in a network has a
unique identifier on that network being its IP address. I'm going to expand on
that analogy in the next few minutes.
 Every device on Internet has a unique IP address. So, they are millions of IP
addresses out there. And no two devices can have the same IP address for
communication on the Internet. Every device needs a unique IP address and hence
the move to IP version 6 these days because of IP version 4 address exhaustion.
  So, for example you cannot have a device 10.1.1.1 communicating with another
device with the same IP address, that's going to cause a conflict in the network.
 Every device on the Internet has its own unique IP address and requires a unique
IP address for communication.
 Now I will be talking about RFC 1918 addresses in a moment, in that RFC private IP
address as I explained.
 So, 10.1.1.1 is an example of a private IP address as specified in RFC 1918. And a
lot of organizations today, private IP addresses are used internally and then those
addresses on NAT’d or network address translated onto the Internet.
 So, when a device with IP address 10.1.1.1 is connected to a public IP address
such as 12.1.1.1, the public IP address in this case 12.1.1.1 needs to be unique on
the Internet.
 For now, just understand that IP address is on the internet need to be unique
from each other.
Network address translation or NAT once again is not covered in this video. But I will be
discussing that in the set of CCNA videos.
So be aware that in the real-world multiple companies may use my IP address 10.1.1.1 but
those addresses are NAT’d to unique IP addresses.

IP Characteristics
  IP version 4 or Internet Protocol version 4 is a layer 3 or network a layer protocol as
per the OSI model. In different video, i explained the OSI model. So, if you're not
sure about layers, please refer to that video.
 IP version 4 is a connectionless protocol. In other words, there are no sessions
formed when traffic is transmitted. The transmitter simply sends data without
notification to the receiver no status information is sent back from the receiver to the
transmitter, it's totally connectionless.

 TCP or transmission control protocol, on the other hand, is connection

orientated. TCP will set up a session, so before transmission takes place in TCP,
the transmitter sends what's called a SYN or synchronization message to the
receiver.
 There's a SYN ACK message from the receiver to the transmitter and then a ACK
or acknowledgement message from the transmitted to the receiver. So, before
any data is transmitted. The d evices using TCP go through what's called the
three-way handshake. SYN, SYN ACK and ACK.

 IP on the other hand doesn't do any of that. Each packet is treated independently of
other packets.
 That's why traffic can take different paths to get to a destination.
 Routers will route the traffic via different paths based on options such as load
balancing because each packet is independent, and IP is a connectionless
protocol.
 Routers can also base routing decisions on different values such as
 bandwidth or hop count.
 But it is possible that packets from one session take divergent or different parts
to get to a destination.
 So, for example RIP will base its routing decisions on hop count, which is not good
and hence RIP is not used that often anymore.
 OSPF will base it on bandwidths other running protocols will use their own metrics
to determine the best path.
 I'll be discussing routing protocols in more detail later in this course but in brief,
routing protocols determine the best path or best route from A to B.
This is based on the hierarchical addressing structure in IP version 4 and IP version 6 where
we have both a network and host portion as part of the address.
  Router base their routing decisions on the network portion of the address rather
than on the host portion of the address and I'll explain network, and host portions in
a moment.
 IP also only gives best effort to delivery of packets. There is no guarantee of packet
delivery any packet could be misdirected. It could be duplicated, or it could be lost
in transmission when sent to a destination and that should be expected in IP
transmissions.
Once again TCP which is a connection-oriented protocol has the ability to read transmit
packets that go missing, UDP another layer for protocol doesn't retransmit packets. If they
get dropped simply lost, and the applications layer need to take care of that.
 There is also no data recovery features in IP. If the packet for example gets
corrupted, the end devices need to handle that and not the routers in between.

So, in summary IP has no built-in sessions, no data recovery, no retransmissions. Higher

layer protocols such as TCP will need to handle dropped packets, corrupted packets,
misdirected packets and so forth.
IP does not provide those features and relies on Higher layer protocols to implement those
features.