Module 9: IPv4

Addressing
Networking Basics (BNET)
Module Objectives
Module Title: IPv4 Addressing
Module Objective: Explain how IPv4 addresses are used in network communication and segmentation.

Topic Title Topic Objective

IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, Compare the characteristics and uses of the unicast, broadcast, and
and Multicast multicast IPv4 addresses.
Types of IPv4 Addresses Explain public, private, and reserved IPv4 addresses.
Explain how subnetting segments a network to enable better
Network Segmentation
communication.

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9.1 IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast,
and Multicast

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Video - IPv4 Unicast

This video reviews the IPv4 unicast communication process.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Unicast
• An IPv4 address has a network portion and a host portion. There are different ways to send a
packet from a source device, and these different transmissions affect the destination IPv4
addresses.

• Unicast transmission refers to one device sending a message to one other device in one-to-one
communications.

• A unicast packet has a destination IP address that is a unicast address which goes to a single
recipient. A source IP address can only be a unicast address, because the packet can only
originate from a single source. This is regardless of whether the destination IP address is a
unicast, broadcast, or multicast.

• Note: In this course, all communication between devices is unicast unless otherwise noted.

• IPv4 unicast host addresses are in the address range of [Link] to [Link].
However, within this range, special purposes reserve many addresses. This module will discuss
these special purpose addresses later.
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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Unicast (Cont.)

• Note: In the animation, notice that the

slash notion, or /24, represents the
subnet mask for [Link]. This
indicates that the subnet mask is 24
bits long. The subnet mask
[Link] in binary is
11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Video - IPv4 Broadcast

This video reviews IPv4 broadcast transmission.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Broadcast

• Broadcast transmission refers to a device sending messages to all the devices on a network in
one-to-all communications.

• A broadcast packet has a destination IP address with all (1s) in the host portion or 32 (1) bits.

• Note: IPv4 uses broadcast packets. However, there are no broadcast packets with IPv6.

• All devices must process a broadcast packet in the same domain. A broadcast domain identifies
all hosts on the same network segment, and a specific network sends a direct broadcast to all
hosts.

• For example, a [Link]/24 network host sends a packet to [Link]. A limited broadcast is
sent to [Link]. By default, routers do not forward broadcasts.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Broadcast (Cont.)

• Broadcast packets use resources on the network and make every receiving host on the network
process the packet.

• Therefore, broadcast traffic should be limited so that it does not adversely affect the network's
performance or devices.

• Because routers separate broadcast domains, subdividing networks can improve performance by
eliminating excessive broadcast traffic.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Video - IPv4 Multicast

This video reviews IPv4 multicast transmission.

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IPv4 Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
Multicast
• The multicast transmission reduces traffic by allowing a host to send a single packet to a selected
set of hosts that subscribe to a multicast group.

• A multicast packet is a packet with a destination IP address that is a multicast address. IPv4 has
reserved the [Link] to [Link] addresses as a multicast range.

• Hosts that receive multicast packets are called multicast clients. The multicast clients use services
requested by a client program to subscribe to the multicast group.

• A single IPv4 multicast destination address represents each multicast group. When an IPv4 host
subscribes to a multicast group, the host processes packets addressed to this multicast address
and packets to its uniquely allocated unicast address.

• Routing protocols such as OSPF use multicast transmissions. For example, routers enabled with
OSPF communicate with each other using the reserved OSPF multicast address [Link]. Only
devices allowed with OSPF will process these packets with [Link] as the destination IPv4
address. All other devices will ignore these packets.
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9.2 Types of IPv4 Addresses

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Public and Private IPv4 Addresses

• Just as there are different ways to transmit an IPv4 packet, there are also different types of IPv4
addresses. Some IPv4 addresses cannot be used to go out to the internet, and others are
allocated explicitly for routing to the internet. Some are used to verify a connection, and others are
self-assigned.

• Internet service provider (ISP) routers globally route public IPv4 addresses. However, not all
available IPv4 addresses can be used on the internet. There are blocks of addresses called
private addresses that most organizations use to assign IPv4 addresses to internal hosts.

• In the mid-1990s, with the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW), private IPv4 addresses
were introduced because of the depletion of IPv4 address space. Private IPv4 addresses are not
unique and can be used internally within any network.

• The long-term solution to IPv4 address depletion was IPv6.

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Public and Private IPv4 Addresses (Cont.)

• Private addresses are defined in RFC 1918 and are sometimes referred to as RFC 1918
address space.

Network Address and Prefix RFC 1918 Private Address Range

[Link]/8 [Link] - [Link]
[Link]/12 [Link] - [Link]
[Link]/16 [Link] - [Link]

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Routing to the Internet
• Most internal networks, from large enterprises to home networks, use private IPv4 addresses for
addressing all internal devices (intranet), including hosts and routers. However, private addresses
are not globally routable.

• In the figure, customer networks 1, 2, and 3

send packets outside their internal
networks.

• These packets have a source IPv4 address

that is private and a destination IPv4
address that is public (globally routable).

• Packets with private addresses must be

filtered (discarded) or translated to a public
address before forwarding the packet to an
ISP.
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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Routing to the Internet (Cont.)

• Before the ISP can forward this packet, it must translate the source IPv4 address, which is a
private address, to a public IPv4 address using Network Address Translation (NAT).

• NAT is used to translate between private IPv4 and public IPv4 addresses.

• This is done on the router connecting the internal and ISP networks.

• Private IPv4 addresses in the organization’s intranet will be translated to public IPv4 addresses
before routing to the internet.

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Special Use IPv4 Addresses
• Specific addresses, such as network and broadcast addresses, cannot be assigned to hosts.

• Special addresses can also be set to hosts, but with restrictions on how those hosts can interact
within the network.

Link-Local addresses

• Link-local addresses ([Link] /16 or [Link] to [Link]) are more commonly

known as the Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) addresses or self-assigned addresses.

• A Windows client uses them to self-configure if the client cannot obtain an IP address through
other methods.

• Link-local addresses can be used in a peer-to-peer connection but are not commonly used for this
purpose.

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Special Use IPv4 Addresses (Cont.)
Pinging the Loopback Interface
Loopback addresses

• Loopback addresses ([Link] /8 or

[Link] to [Link]) commonly
identify as only [Link].

• These are special addresses used by a host to

direct traffic to itself.

• For example, test connections frequently use

the ping command to other hosts. (Ping will be
covered later in this course.)

• But you can also use the ping command to

test the IP configuration on your device, as
shown in the figure.
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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Legacy Classful Addressing

In 1981, IPv4 addresses were assigned using classful addressing defined in RFC 790 (
[Link] Assigned Numbers. Customers were allocated a network address
based on one of three classes, A, B, or C. The RFC divided the unicast ranges into specific classes
as follows:

• Class A ([Link]/8 to [Link]/8) - Designed to support vast networks with more than 16 million
host addresses. Class A used a fixed /8 prefix with the first octet to indicate the network address
and the remaining three octets for host addresses (more than 16 million host addresses per
network).
• Class B ([Link] /16 - [Link] /16) - Designed to support the needs of moderate to large-
size networks with up to approximately 65,000 host addresses. Class B used a fixed /16 prefix
with the two high-order octets to indicate the network address and the remaining two for host
addresses (more than 65,000 host addresses per network).
• Class C ([Link] /24 - [Link] /24) - Designed to support small networks with a
maximum of 254 hosts. Class C used a fixed /24 prefix with the first three octets to indicate the
network and the remaining octet for the host addresses (only 254 host addresses per network).
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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Legacy Classful Addressing (Cont.)

Note: There is also a Class D multicast block consisting of [Link] to [Link] and a Class E
experimental address block consisting of [Link] - [Link].

• At the time, with a limited number of computers using the internet, classful addressing was an
effective means to allocate addresses. As shown in the figure, Class A and B networks have
many host addresses, and Class C has very few. Class A networks accounted for 50% of the
IPv4 networks. This caused most of the available IPv4 addresses to go unused.

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Legacy Classful Addressing (Cont.)

• In the mid-1990s, with the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW), classful addressing was
deprecated to more efficiently allocate the limited IPv4 address space.

• Classful address allocation was replaced with classless addressing, which is used today.

• Classless addressing ignores the rules of classes (A, B, C).

• Public IPv4 network addresses (network addresses and subnet masks) are allocated based on
the number of addresses that can be justified.

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Assignment of IP Addresses

• The internet globally routes public IPv4 addresses. These addresses must be unique.

• The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority manages IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (IANA).

• The IANA manages and allocates blocks of IP addresses to the Regional Internet Registries
(RIRs).

• RIRs allocate IP addresses to ISPs that provide IPv4 address blocks to organizations and smaller
ISPs.

• Organizations can also get their addresses directly from an RIR (subject to the policies of that
RIR).

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Assignment of IP Addresses (Cont.)

Regional Internet Registries

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Types of IPv4 Addresses
Assignment of IP Addresses (Cont.)

• AfriNIC (African Network Information Centre) - Africa Region

• APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) - Asia/Pacific Region

• ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) - North America Region

• LACNIC (Regional Latin-American and Caribbean IP Address Registry) - Latin America and some
Caribbean Islands

• RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) - Europe, the Middle East, and
Central Asia

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9.3 Network Segmentation

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Network Segmentation
Video - Network Segmentation

This video reviews the concept that a router would segment or separate Layer 2 broadcast domains.

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Network Segmentation
Broadcast Domains and Segmentation

• In an Ethernet LAN, devices use broadcasts and the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to locate
other devices.

• ARP sends Layer 2 broadcasts to a known IPv4 address on the local network to discover the
MAC address.

• Devices on Ethernet LANs also find other devices using services.

• A host typically acquires its IPv4 address configuration using the Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP), which sends broadcasts on the local network to locate a DHCP server.

• Switches propagate broadcasts out all interfaces except the interface on which it was received.

• For example, if a switch in the figure were to receive a broadcast, it would forward it to the other
switches and users connected to the network.

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Network Segmentation
Broadcast Domains and Segmentation (Cont.)

Routers Segment Broadcast Domains

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Network Segmentation
Broadcast Domains and Segmentation (Cont.)

• Routers do not propagate broadcasts.

• When a router receives a broadcast, it does not forward it to other interfaces.

• For instance, when R1 receives a broadcast on its Gigabit Ethernet 0/0 interface, it does not
forward out another interface.

• Therefore, each router interface connects to a broadcast domain and only propagates within that
specific broadcast domain.

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Network Segmentation
Problems with Large Broadcast Domains
• A large broadcast domain is a network that connects many hosts.

• A problem with a large broadcast domain is that these hosts can generate excessive broadcasts
and negatively affect the network.

• In the figure, LAN 1 connects 400 users,

which could generate excessive
broadcast traffic.

• This results in slow network operations

due to the significant amount of traffic it
can cause and slow device operations
because a device must accept and
process each broadcast packet.

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Network Segmentation
Problems with Large Broadcast Domains (Cont.)

• The solution is to reduce the network size to create smaller broadcast domains in a subnetting
process. These smaller network spaces are called subnets.

• In the figure, the 400 users in

LAN 1 with network address
[Link] /16 have been
divided into two subnets of 200
users each: [Link] /24 and
[Link] /24.

• Broadcasts only
propagate within the smaller
broadcast domains.

• Therefore, a broadcast in LAN 1

would not propagate to LAN 2.
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Network Segmentation
Problems with Large Broadcast Domains (Cont.)

• Notice how the prefix length has changed from a single /16 network to two /24 networks.

• This is the basis of subnetting: using host bits to create additional subnets.

• The use of the terms subnet and network are interchangeable.

• Most networks are a subnet of some larger address block.

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Network Segmentation
Reasons for Segmenting Networks

• Subnetting reduces overall network traffic and improves network performance.

• It also enables an administrator to implement security policies, such as which subnets are allowed
or not allowed to communicate together.

• Another reason is that it reduces the number of devices affected by abnormal broadcast traffic
due to misconfigurations, hardware/software problems, or malicious intent.

• There are various ways of using subnets to help manage network devices.

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Network Segmentation
Reasons for Segmenting Networks (Cont.)

Subnetting by Location

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Network Segmentation
Reasons for Segmenting Networks (Cont.)

Subnetting by Group or Function

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Network Segmentation
Reasons for Segmenting Networks (Cont.)

Subnetting by Device Type

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Network Segmentation
Reasons for Segmenting Networks (Cont.)

• Network administrators can create subnets using any other division that makes sense for the
network.

• Notice in each figure the subnets use longer prefix lengths to identify networks.

• Understanding how to subnet networks is a fundamental skill that all network administrators must
develop.

• This process creates various methods to understand it better.

• Although a little overwhelming initially, pay close attention to the detail, and subnetting will
become easier with practice.

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9.4 IPv4 Addressing Summary

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IPv4 Addressing Summary
What Did I Learn in this Module?
• Unicast transmission refers to one device sending a message to one other device in one-to-one
communications.
• A unicast packet has a destination IP address that is a unicast address that goes to a single recipient.
• A source IP address can only be a unicast address because the packet can only originate from a single
source, regardless of whether the destination IP address is a unicast, broadcast, or multicast.
• IPv4 unicast host addresses are in the address range of [Link] to [Link].
• Broadcast transmission refers to a device sending messages to all the devices on a network in one-to-all
communications.
• A broadcast packet has a destination IP address with all (1s) in the host portion or 32 (1) bits.
• All devices must process a broadcast packet in the same broadcast domain.
• A broadcast may be directed or limited.
• A specific network sends a direct broadcast to all hosts.
• A limited broadcast is sent to [Link].
• By default, routers do not forward broadcasts.
• The multicast transmission reduces traffic by allowing a host to send a single packet to a selected set of hosts
that subscribe to a multicast group.
• A multicast packet is a packet with a destination IP address that is a multicast address.
• IPv4 has reserved the [Link] to [Link] addresses as a multicast range.
• A single IPv4 multicast destination address represents each multicast group.
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IPv4 Addressing Summary
What Did I Learn in this Module? (Cont.)
• When an IPv4 host subscribes to a multicast group, the host processes packets addressed to this
multicast address and packets to its uniquely allocated unicast address.
• ISP routers globally route public IPv4 addresses.
• There are blocks of addresses called private addresses that most organizations use to assign
IPv4 addresses to internal hosts.
• Most internal networks, from large enterprises to home networks, use private IPv4 addresses (not globally
routable) for addressing all internal devices (intranet), including hosts and routers.
• Before the ISP can forward this packet, it must translate the source IPv4 address, which is a private
address, to a public IPv4 address using NAT.
• Loopback addresses ([Link] /8 or [Link] to [Link]) are more commonly identified as only
[Link]; these are special addresses used by a host to direct traffic to itself.
• Link-local addresses ([Link] /16 or [Link] to [Link]) are more commonly known as
the Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) addresses or self-assigned addresses.
• In 1981, IPv4 addresses were assigned using classful addressing defined in RFC 790 (
[Link] Assigned Numbers (classes, A, B, or C).
• There is also a Class D multicast block consisting of [Link] to [Link] and a Class E experimental
address block consisting of [Link] - [Link].

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IPv4 Addressing Summary
What Did I Learn in this Module? (Cont.)
• The internet globally routes public IPv4 addresses, and they must be unique. The IANA manages both IPv4
and IPv6 addresses.
• The IANA manages and allocates blocks of IP addresses to the RIRs. RIRs give IP addresses to ISPs that
provide IPv4 address blocks to organizations and smaller ISPs. Organizations can also get their addresses
directly from an RIR.
• In an Ethernet LAN, devices use broadcasts and ARP to locate other devices.
• ARP sends Layer 2 broadcasts to a known IPv4 address on the local network to discover the MAC address.
• A host typically acquires its IPv4 address configuration using DHCP, which sends broadcasts on the local
network to locate a DHCP server.
• Switches propagate broadcasts out all interfaces except the interface on which it was received.
• A large broadcast domain is a network that connects many hosts.
• A problem with a large broadcast domain is that these hosts can generate excessive broadcasts and
negatively affect the network.
• The solution is to reduce the network size to create smaller broadcast domains (subnets) in a
subnetting process.
• Subnets reduce overall network traffic, improves network performance, and reduces the number of devices
affected by abnormal broadcast traffic due to misconfigurations, hardware/software problems, or malicious
intent.

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