# User:Kumowoon1025/Sandbox/IPv4

Template:IPstack Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP). It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version deployed for production in the ARPANET in 1983. It still routes most Internet traffic today,[1] despite the ongoing deployment of a successor protocol, IPv6. IPv4 is described in IETF publication RFC 791 (September 1981), replacing an earlier definition (RFC 760, January 1980).

IPv4 uses a 32-bit address space, which limits the number of unique hosts to 4,294,967,296 (232), but large blocks are reserved for special networking methods.

## Purpose

The Internet Protocol is the protocol that defines and enables internetworking at the internet layer of the Internet Protocol Suite. In essence it forms the Internet. It uses a logical addressing system and performs routing, which is the forwarding of packets from a source host to the next router that is one hop closer to the intended destination host on another network.

IPv4 is a connectionless protocol, and operates on a best effort delivery model, in that it does not guarantee delivery, nor does it assure proper sequencing or avoidance of duplicate delivery. These aspects, including data integrity, are addressed by an upper layer transport protocol, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

IPv4 addresses may be represented in any notation expressing a 32-bit integer value. They are most often written in dot-decimal notation, which consists of four octets of the address expressed individually in decimal numbers and separated by periods.

For example, the quad-dotted IP address 192.0.2.235 represents the 32-bit decimal number 3221226219, which in hexadecimal format is 0xC00002EB. This may also be expressed in dotted hex format as 0xC0.0x00.0x02.0xEB, or with octal byte values as 0300.0000.0002.0353.

CIDR notation combines the address with its routing prefix in a compact format, in which the address is followed by a slash character (/) and the count of consecutive 1 bits in the routing prefix (subnet mask).

Other address representations were in common use when classful networking was practiced. For example, the loopback address 127.0.0.1 was commonly written as 127.1, given that it belonged to a class-A network with eight bits for the network mask and 24 bits for the host number. When fewer than four numbers are specified in the address in dotted notation, the last value is treated as an integer of as many bytes as are required to fill out the address to four octets. Thus, the address 127.65530 is equivalent to 127.0.255.250.

### Allocation

In the original design of IPv4, an IP address was divided into two parts: the network identifier was the most significant octet of the address, and the host identifier was the rest of the address. The latter was also called the rest field. This structure permitted a maximum of 256 network identifiers, which was quickly found to be inadequate.

To overcome this limit, the most-significant address octet was redefined in 1981 to create network classes, in a system which later became known as classful networking. The revised system defined five classes. Classes A, B, and C had different bit lengths for network identification. The rest of the address was used as previously to identify a host within a network. Because of the different sizes of fields in different classes, each network class had a different capacity for addressing hosts. In addition to the three classes for addressing hosts, Class D was defined for multicast addressing and Class E was reserved for future applications.

Dividing existing classful networks into subnets began in 1985 with the publication of Template:IETF RFC. This division was made more flexible with the introduction of variable-length subnet masks (VLSM) in Template:IETF RFC in 1987. In 1993, based on this work, Template:IETF RFC introduced Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR),[2] which expressed the number of bits (from the most significant) as, for instance, /24, and the class-based scheme was dubbed classful, by contrast. CIDR was designed to permit repartitioning of any address space so that smaller or larger blocks of addresses could be allocated to users. The hierarchical structure created by CIDR is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the regional Internet registries (RIRs). Each RIR maintains a publicly searchable WHOIS database that provides information about IP address assignments.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) have restricted from general use various reserved IP addresses for special purposes. Notably these addresses are used for multicast traffic and to provide addressing space for unrestricted uses on private networks.

0.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0–0.255.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Software Current network[3] (only valid as source address).
10.0.0.0/8 10.0.0.0–10.255.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Private network Used for local communications within a private network.[4]
100.64.0.0/10 100.64.0.0–100.127.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Private network Shared address space[5] for communications between a service provider and its subscribers when using a carrier-grade NAT.
127.0.0.0/8 127.0.0.0–127.255.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Host Used for loopback addresses to the local host.[3]
169.254.0.0/16 169.254.0.0–169.254.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Subnet Used for link-local addresses[6] between two hosts on a single link when no IP address is otherwise specified, such as would have normally been retrieved from a DHCP server.
172.16.0.0/12 172.16.0.0–172.31.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Private network Used for local communications within a private network.[4]
192.0.0.0/24 192.0.0.0–192.0.0.255 256 Private network IETF Protocol Assignments.[3]
192.0.2.0/24 192.0.2.0–192.0.2.255 256 Documentation Assigned as TEST-NET-1, documentation and examples.[7]
192.88.99.0/24 192.88.99.0–192.88.99.255 256 Internet Reserved.[8] Formerly used for IPv6 to IPv4 relay[9] (included IPv6 address block 2002::/16).
192.168.0.0/16 192.168.0.0–192.168.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Private network Used for local communications within a private network.[4]
198.18.0.0/15 198.18.0.0–198.19.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Private network Used for benchmark testing of inter-network communications between two separate subnets.[10]
198.51.100.0/24 198.51.100.0–198.51.100.255 256 Documentation Assigned as TEST-NET-2, documentation and examples.[7]
203.0.113.0/24 203.0.113.0–203.0.113.255 256 Documentation Assigned as TEST-NET-3, documentation and examples.[7]
224.0.0.0/4 224.0.0.0–239.255.255.255 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Internet In use for IP multicast.[11] (Former Class D network).
240.0.0.0/4 240.0.0.0–255.255.255.254 Error in {{val}}: first argument is not a valid number or requires too much precision to display. Internet Reserved for future use.[12] (Former Class E network).

#### Private networks

Of the approximately four billion addresses defined in IPv4, about 18 million addresses in three ranges are reserved for use in private networks. Packets addresses in these ranges are not routable in the public Internet; they are ignored by all public routers. Therefore, private hosts cannot directly communicate with public networks, but require network address translation at a routing gateway for this purpose.

Reserved private IPv4 network ranges[4]
24-bit block 10.0.0.0/8 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255 16,777,216 Single Class A.
20-bit block 172.16.0.0/12 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 1,048,576 Contiguous range of 16 Class B blocks.
16-bit block 192.168.0.0/16 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 65,536 Contiguous range of 256 Class C blocks.

Since two private networks, e.g., two branch offices, cannot directly interoperate via the public Internet, the two networks must be bridged across the Internet via a virtual private network (VPN) or an IP tunnel, which encapsulates packets, including their headers containing the private addresses, in a protocol layer during transmission across the public network. Additionally, encapsulated packets may be encrypted for the transmission across public networks to secure the data.

When the address block was reserved, no standards existed for address autoconfiguration. Microsoft created an implementation called Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA), which was deployed on millions of machines and became a de facto standard. Many years later, in May 2005, the IETF defined a formal standard in RFC 3927, entitled Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses.

### Loopback

Main article: Localhost

The class A network 127.0.0.0 (classless network 127.0.0.0/8) is reserved for loopback. IP packets whose source addresses belong to this network should never appear outside a host. Packets received on a non-loopback interface with a loopback source or destination address must be dropped.

### Addresses ending in 0 or 255

Networks with subnet masks of at least 24 bits, i.e. Class C networks in classful networking, and networks with CIDR suffixes /24 to /30 (255.255.255.0–255.255.255.252) may not have an address ending in 0 or 255.

Classful addressing prescribed only three possible subnet masks: Class A, 255.0.0.0 or /8; Class B, 255.255.0.0 or /16; and Class C, 255.255.255.0 or /24. For example, in the subnet 192.168.5.0/255.255.255.0 (192.168.5.0/24) the identifier 192.168.5.0 commonly is used to refer to the entire subnet. To avoid ambiguity in representation, the address ending in the octet 0 is reserved [14]

Binary form Dot-decimal notation
Network space 11000000.10101000.00000101.00000000 192.168.5.0
Broadcast address 11000000.10101000.00000101.11111111 192.168.5.255
In bold, is shown the host part of the IP address; the other part is the network prefix. The host gets inverted (logical NOT), but the network prefix remains intact.

However, this does not mean that every address ending in 0 or 255 cannot be used as a host address. For example, in the /16 subnet 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0, which is equivalent to the address range 192.168.0.0–192.168.255.255, the broadcast address is 192.168.255.255. One can use the following addresses for hosts, even though they end with 255: 192.168.1.255, 192.168.2.255, etc. Also, 192.168.0.0 is the network identifier and must not be assigned to an interface.[15] The addresses 192.168.1.0, 192.168.2.0, etc., may be assigned, despite ending with 0.

In networks smaller than /24, broadcast addresses do not necessarily end with 255. For example, a CIDR subnet 203.0.113.16/28 has the broadcast address 203.0.113.31.

Binary form Dot-decimal notation
Network space 11001011.00000000.01110001.00010000 203.0.113.16
Broadcast address 11001011.00000000.01110001.00011111 203.0.113.31
In bold, is shown the host part of the IP address; the other part is the network prefix. The host gets inverted (logical NOT), but the network prefix remains intact.

Main article: Domain Name System

Hosts on the Internet are usually known by names, e.g., www.example.com, not primarily by their IP address, which is used for routing and network interface identification. The use of domain names requires translating, called resolving, them to addresses and vice versa. This is analogous to looking up a phone number in a phone book using the recipient's name.

The translation between addresses and domain names is performed by the Domain Name System (DNS), a hierarchical, distributed naming system which allows for subdelegation of name spaces to other DNS servers.

Since the 1980s, it was apparent that the pool of available IPv4 addresses was being depleted at a rate that was not initially anticipated in the original design of the network address system.[17] The main market forces which accelerated IPv4 address depletion included:

The threat of exhaustion motivated the introduction of a number of remedial technologies, such as classful networks, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) methods, network address translation (NAT) and strict usage-based allocation policies. To provide a long-term solution to the pending address exhaustion, IPv6 was created in the 1990s, which made many more addresses available by increasing the address size to 128 bits. IPv6 has been in commercial deployment since 2006.

The primary address pool of the Internet, maintained by IANA, was exhausted on 3 February 2011, when the last 5 blocks were allocated to the 5 RIRs.[18][19] APNIC was the first RIR to exhaust its regional pool on 15 April 2011, except for a small amount of address space reserved for the transition to IPv6, which will be allocated under a much more restricted policy.[20]

The accepted and standard long term solution is to use IPv6 which increased the address size to 128 bits, providing a vastly increased address space that also allows improved route aggregation across the Internet and offers large subnetwork allocations of a minimum of 264 host addresses to end-users. However IPv4-only hosts cannot directly communicate with IPv6-only hosts so IPv6 alone does not provide an immediate solution to the IPv4 exhaustion problem. Migration to IPv6 is in progress but completion is expected to take considerable time.[21]

## Packet structure

An IP packet consists of a header section and a data section.

An IP packet has no data checksum or any other footer after the data section. Typically the link layer encapsulates IP packets in frames with a CRC footer that detects most errors, and typically the end-to-end TCP layer checksum detects most other errors.[22]

The IPv4 packet header consists of 14 fields, of which 13 are required. The 14th field is optional and aptly named: options. The fields in the header are packed with the most significant byte first (big endian), and for the diagram and discussion, the most significant bits are considered to come first (MSB 0 bit numbering). The most significant bit is numbered 0, so the version field is actually found in the four most significant bits of the first byte, for example.

Offsets Octet 0 1 2 3
Octet Bit 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
0 0 Version IHL DSCP ECN Total Length
4 32 Identification Flags Fragment Offset
8 64 Time To Live Protocol Header Checksum
20 160 Options (if IHL > 5)
24 192
28 224
32 256

[[Grants:Evaluation/Glossary/en#{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] Template:Term Template:Defn Template:Term Template:Defn Template:Term Template:Defn Template:Term Template:Defn

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Template:Glossary end The fragment offset field is measured in units of eight-byte blocks. It is 13 bits long and specifies the offset of a particular fragment relative to the beginning of the original unfragmented IP datagram. The first fragment has an offset of zero. This allows a maximum offset of (213 – 1) × 8 = 65,528 bytes, which would exceed the maximum IP packet length of 65,535 bytes with the header length included (65,528 + 20 = 65,548 bytes). [[Grants:Evaluation/Glossary/en#{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]

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Template:Glossary end The options field is not often used. Note that the value in the IHL field must include enough extra 32-bit words to hold all the options (plus any padding needed to ensure that the header contains an integer number of 32-bit words). The list of options may be terminated with an EOL (End of Options List, 0x00) option; this is only necessary if the end of the options would not otherwise coincide with the end of the header. The possible options that can be put in the header are as follows:

Field Size (bits) Description
Copied 1 Set to 1 if the options need to be copied into all fragments of a fragmented packet.
Option Class 2 A general options category. 0 is for "control" options, and 2 is for "debugging and measurement". 1 and 3 are reserved.
Option Number 5 Specifies an option.
Option Length 8 Indicates the size of the entire option (including this field). This field may not exist for simple options.
Option Data Variable Option-specific data. This field may not exist for simple options.
• Note: If the header length is greater than 5 (i.e., it is from 6 to 15) it means that the options field is present and must be considered.
• Note: Copied, Option Class, and Option Number are sometimes referred to as a single eight-bit field, the Option Type.

Packets containing some options may be considered as dangerous by some routers and be blocked.[23]

### Data

The packet payload is not included in the checksum. Its contents are interpreted based on the value of the Protocol header field.

Some of the common payload protocols are:

Protocol Number Protocol Name Abbreviation
1 Internet Control Message Protocol ICMP
2 Internet Group Management Protocol IGMP
6 Transmission Control Protocol TCP
17 User Datagram Protocol UDP
41 IPv6 encapsulation ENCAP
89 Open Shortest Path First OSPF
132 Stream Control Transmission Protocol SCTP

See List of IP protocol numbers for a complete list.

## Fragmentation and reassembly

Main article: IP fragmentation

The Internet Protocol enables traffic between networks. The design accommodates networks of diverse physical nature; it is independent of the underlying transmission technology used in the link layer. Networks with different hardware usually vary not only in transmission speed, but also in the maximum transmission unit (MTU). When one network wants to transmit datagrams to a network with a smaller MTU, it may fragment its datagrams. In IPv4, this function was placed at the Internet Layer, and is performed in IPv4 routers, which thus require no implementation of any higher layers for the function of routing IP packets.

In contrast, IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol, does not allow routers to perform fragmentation; hosts must determine the path MTU before sending datagrams.

### Fragmentation

When a router receives a packet, it examines the destination address and determines the outgoing interface to use and that interface's MTU. If the packet size is bigger than the MTU, and the Do not Fragment (DF) bit in the packet's header is set to 0, then the router may fragment the packet.

The router divides the packet into fragments. The max size of each fragment is the MTU minus the IP header size (20 bytes minimum; 60 bytes maximum). The router puts each fragment into its own packet, each fragment packet having following changes:

• The total length field is the fragment size.
• The more fragments (MF) flag is set for all fragments except the last one, which is set to 0.
• The fragment offset field is set, based on the offset of the fragment in the original data payload. This is measured in units of eight-byte blocks.
• The header checksum field is recomputed.

For example, for an MTU of 1,500 bytes and a header size of 20 bytes, the fragment offsets would be multiples of ${\displaystyle {\frac {1500-20}{8}}=185}$. These multiples are 0, 185, 370, 555, 740, ...

It is possible that a packet is fragmented at one router, and that the fragments are further fragmented at another router. For example, a packet of 4,520 bytes, including the 20 bytes of the IP header (without options) is fragmented to two packets on a link with an MTU of 2,500 bytes:

Fragment Size
(bytes)
(bytes)
Data size
(bytes)
Flag
More fragments
Fragment offset
(8-byte blocks)
1 2500 20 2480 1 0
2 2040 20 2020 0 310

The total data size is preserved: 2480 bytes + 2020 bytes = 4500 bytes. The offsets are ${\displaystyle 0}$ and ${\displaystyle {\frac {0+2480}{8}}=310}$.

On a link with an MTU of 1,500 bytes, each fragment results in two fragments:

Fragment Size
(bytes)
(bytes)
Data size
(bytes)
Flag
More fragments
Fragment offset
(8-byte blocks)
1 1500 20 1480 1 0
2 1020 20 1000 1 185
3 1500 20 1480 1 310
4 560 20 540 0 495

Again, the data size is preserved: 1480 + 1000 = 2480, and 1480 + 540 = 2020.

Also in this case, the More Fragments bit remains 1 for all the fragments that came with 1 in them and for the last fragment that arrives, it works as usual, that is the MF bit is set to 0 only in the last one. And of course, the Identification field continues to have the same value in all re-fragmented fragments. This way, even if fragments are re-fragmented, the receiver knows they have initially all started from the same packet.

The last offset and last data size are used to calculate the total data size: ${\displaystyle 495\times 8+540=3960+540=4500}$.

### Reassembly

A receiver knows that a packet is a fragment, if at least one of the following conditions is true:

• The flag "more fragments" is set, which is true for all fragments except the last.
• The field "fragment offset" is nonzero, which is true for all fragments except the first.

The receiver identifies matching fragments using the foreign and local address, the protocol ID, and the identification field. The receiver reassembles the data from fragments with the same ID using both the fragment offset and the more fragments flag. When the receiver receives the last fragment, which has the "more fragments" flag set to 0, it can calculate the size of the original data payload, by multiplying the last fragment's offset by eight, and adding the last fragment's data size. In the given example, this calculation was 495*8 + 540 = 4500 bytes.

When the receiver has all fragments, they can be reassembled in the correct sequence according to the offsets, to form the original datagram.

## References

1. a b "BGP Analysis Reports". Retrieved 2013-01-09.
2. "Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know" (PDF). 3Com. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 16, 2001. Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
3. a b c d Template:Cite IETF Updated by RFC 8190.
4. a b c d Template:Cite IETF Updated by RFC 6761.
5. Template:Cite IETF
6. Template:Cite IETF
7. a b c Template:Cite IETF
8. Template:Cite IETF
9. Template:Cite IETF Obsoleted by RFC 7526.
10. Template:Cite IETF Updated by: RFC 6201 and RFC 6815.
11. Template:Cite IETF
12. Template:Cite IETF Obsoletes RFC 1700.
13. Template:Cite IETF
14. "RFC 923". IETF. June 1984. Retrieved 15 November 2019. Special Addresses: In certain contexts, it is useful to have fixed addresses with functional significance rather than as identifiers of specific hosts. When such usage is called for, the address zero is to be interpreted as meaning "this", as in "this network".
15. Robert Braden (October 1989). "Requirements for Internet Hosts – Communication Layers". IETF. p. 31. RFC 1122.
16. Robert Braden (October 1989). "Requirements for Internet Hosts – Communication Layers". IETF. p. 66. RFC 1122.
17. "World 'running out of Internet addresses'". Archived from the original on 2011-01-25. Retrieved 2011-01-23. Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
18. Smith, Lucie; Lipner, Ian (3 February 2011). "Free Pool of IPv4 Address Space Depleted". Number Resource Organization. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
19. ICANN,nanog mailing list. "Five /8s allocated to RIRs – no unallocated IPv4 unicast /8s remain".
20. Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (15 April 2011). "APNIC IPv4 Address Pool Reaches Final /8". Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2011. Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
21. 2016 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Innovative Business Practices for the Transformation of Societies (EmergiTech) : date, 3-6 Aug. 2016. University of Technology, Mauritius,, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Piscataway, NJ. ISBN 9781509007066. OCLC 972636788.
22. RFC 1726 section 6.2
23. "Cisco unofficial FAQ". Retrieved 2012-05-10.