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IP A
DDRESSING
This chapter provides some background detail on the IP information that
needs to be assigned to your Switch to enable you to manage it across a
network. The topics covered are:
■
IP Addresses
■
Subnets and Subnet Masks
■
Default Gateways
IP addressing is a vast topic and there are white papers on the World
Wide Web and publications available if you wish to learn more about IP
addressing.
IP Addresses
This IP address section is divided into two parts:
■
Simple Overview — Gives a brief overview of what an IP address is.
■
Advanced Overview — Gives a more in depth explanation of IP
addresses and the way they are structured.
Simple Overview
To operate correctly, each device on your network must have a unique IP
address. IP addresses have the format
n.n.n.n
where
n
is a decimal
number between 0 and 255. An example IP address is ‘192.168.100.8’.
The IP address can be split into two parts:
■
The first part, called the network part, (‘192.168’ in the example)
identifies the network on which the device resides.
■
The second part, called the host part, (‘100.8’ in the example)
identifies the device within the network.
If your network is internal to your organization only, you may use any
arbitrary IP address. 3Com suggests you use addresses in the series