Whether you are using a wired or a wireless network, each computer you communicate with (including yours) must have a unique address on the network. In TCP/IP, each computer must be assigned an IP address. This section gives you some background in IP addresses.
There are two basic ways to assign a host name and IP address to a network interface in Linux:
Static addresses — With static IP addresses, each computer has an IP address that doesn't change each time the computer reboots or restarts its network interface. Its IP address can be entered manually, since it's not assigned on the fly. You can do this at Red Hat Linux installation time, or later using the Network Configuration window.
Dynamic addresses — With dynamic addresses, a client computer gets its IP address assigned from a server on the network when the client boots. The most popular protocol for providing dynamic addresses is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). With this method, a client computer may not have the same IP address each time it boots.
Tip? |
If you expect to add and remove computers regularly from your LAN or if you have a limited number of IP addresses, you should use DHCP to assign IP addresses. Chapter 23 describes how to set up a DHCP server. |
An IP address is a four-part number, with each part represented by a number from 0 to 255 (256 numbers total). Part of that IP address represents the network the computer exists on, while the remainder identifies the specific host on that network. Here is an example of an IP address:
192.168.35.121
Originally, IP addresses were grouped together and assigned to an organization that needed IP addresses, based on IP address classes. These days, a more efficient method, referred to as Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), is used to improve routing and waste fewer IP addresses. These two IP address methods are described in the following sections.
Unfortunately, it's not so easy to understand which part of an IP address represents the network and which represents the host without explaining how IP addresses are structured. IP addresses are assigned in the following manner. A network administrator is given a pool of addresses. The administrator can then assign specific host addresses within that pool as new computers are added to the organization's local network. There were originally three basic classes of IP addresses, each representing a different size network.
Class A — Each Class A address has a number between 0 and 127 as its first part. Host numbers within a Class A network are represented by any combination of numbers in the next three parts. A Class A network therefore contains millions of host numbers (approximately 256 x 256 x 256, with a few special numbers being invalid). A valid Class A network number is:
24.
Class B — A Class B IP address has a number between 128 and 191 in its first part. With a Class B network, however, the second part also represents the network. This enables a Class B network to have more than 64,000 host addresses (256 x 256). A valid Class B network number is:
135.84
Class C — A Class C IP address begins with a number between 192 and 223 in its first part. With a Class C network, the first three parts of an IP address represent the network, while only the last part represents a specific host. Thus, each Class C network can have 254 numbers (the numbers 0 and 254 can't be assigned to hosts). Here is an example of a Class C network number:
194.122.56
To tell your computer which part of a network address is the network and which is the host, you must enter a number that masks the network number. That number is referred to as the netmask.
Suppose you are assigned the Class B address 135.84, but you are only given the pool of numbers available to the address 135.84.118. How do you tell your network that every address beginning with 135.84.118 represents a host on your network, but that other addresses beginning with 135.84 should be routed to another network? You can do it with a netmask.
The netmask essentially identifies the network number for a network. When you assign the IP address that is associated with your computer's interface to the LAN (eth0), you are asked for a netmask. By default, your computer fills in a number that masks the part of your IP address that represents the class of your network. For example, the default netmasks for Class A, B, and C networks are the following:
Class A netmask: 255.0.0.0
Class B netmask: 255.255.0.0
Class C netmask: 255.255.255.0
Now, if your network was assigned the network number 135.84.118, to tell your computer that 135.84.118 is the network number and not 135.84 (as it normally would be for a Class B address), add a netmask of 255.255.255.0. So you could use host numbers from 1 to 254 (which would go into the fourth part of the number).
To further confuse the issue, you could mask only one or more bits that are part of the IP address. Instead of using the number 255, you could use any other number from 1 to 254 to mask only part of the numbers in that part of the address. (The numbers that you can use for each network get rather strange when you do this.)
The class method of allocating IP addresses had several major drawbacks. First, few organizations fell neatly into one class or another. For most organizations, a Class C address (up to 256 IP addresses) was too small, and a Class B address (up to 65,534 IP addresses) was too big. The result was a lot of wasted numbers in a world where IP addresses were running short. Second, IP classes resulted in too many routing table entries. As a result, routers were becoming overloaded with information.
The Classless Inter-Domain Routing addressing scheme set out to deal with these problems. The scheme is similar to IP address classes, but offers much more flexibility in assigning how much of the 32-bit IP address is the network identifier. Instead of the first 8, 16, or 32 bits identifying the network, 13 to 27 bits could identify the network. As a result, groups of assigned IP addresses could contain from 32 to about 524,000 host addresses.
To indicate the network identifier, a CIDR IP address is followed by a slash (/) and then a number from 13 to 27. A smaller number indicates a network containing more hosts. Here is an example of an IP address that uses the CIDR notation:
128.8.27.18/16
In this example, the first 16 bits (128.8) represent the network number, and the remainder (27.18) represents the specific host number. This network number can contain up to 65,536 hosts (the same as a class B address). The following list shows how many hosts can be represented in networks using different numbers to identify the network:
/13 524,288 hosts /14 262,144 hosts /15 131,072 hosts /16 65,536 hosts /17 32,768 hosts /18 16,382 hosts /19 8,192 hosts /20 4,096 hosts /21 2,048 hosts /22 1,024 hosts /23 512 hosts /24 256 hosts /25 128 hosts /26 64 hosts /27 32 hosts
The CIDR addressing scheme also helps reduce the routing overload problem by having a single, high-level route represent many lower-level routes. For example, an Internet Service Provider could be assigned a single /13 IP network and assign the 500,000-plus addresses to its customers. Routers outside the ISP would only need to know how to reach the ISP for those half-million addresses. The ISP would then be responsible for maintaining routing information for all of the host routes with that network address.
So, what is the impact of assigning IP addresses for the computers on your LAN? How you choose which IP addresses to use depends on your situation. If you are part of a large organization, you should get addresses from your network administrator. Even if you don't connect to other LANs in your organization at the moment, having unique addresses can make it easier to connect to them in the future.
If you are setting up a network for yourself (with no other networks to consider in your organization), you can use private addresses. However, if you need to connect computers to the Internet as servers, apply for your own domain name (from an Internet domain registrar) and IP addresses (from your Internet Service Provider).
Cross-Reference? |
Refer to Chapter 25 for information about getting the IP addresses and domain names you need to configure a public server on the Internet. |
If you don't need to have your LAN accessible from the Internet, choose IP addresses from the set of available general-purpose IP addresses. Using these private IP addresses, you can still access the Internet from your LAN for such things as Web browsing and e-mail by using IP masquerading or Network Address Translation (NAT), as described in Chapter 16. Table 15-3 lists the private IP addresses not used on any public part of the Internet.
Network Class |
Network Numbers |
Addresses per Network Number |
---|---|---|
Class A |
10.0.0.0 |
167,777,216 |
Class B |
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.0.0 |
65,536 |
Class C |
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 |
256 |
So, for a small private LAN, the following numbers are examples of IP addresses that could be assigned to the host computers on your network. (You could use any of the network numbers, plus host numbers, from the table. These are just examples.)
192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2
192.168.1.3
192.168.1.4
192.168.1.5
You could continue that numbering up to 192.168.1.254 on this network, and you could use a network mask of 255.255.255.0.