Netopia 4752 manual Broadcasts, Packet header types

Understanding IP Addressing C-13

The following diagram illustrates the IP address space taken up by the two remote IP subnets. You can see from the diagram why the term nested is appropriate for describing these subnets.

valid addresses used by a.b.c.128

valid addresses used by a.b.c.248

1

129

190

249

254

Address range available to a.b.c.0, less the two nested subnets

Broadcasts

As mentioned earlier, binary IP host or subnet addresses composed entirely of ones or zeros are reserved for broadcasting. A broadcast packet is a packet that is to be delivered to every host on the network if both the host address and the subnet address are all ones or all zeros, or to every host on the subnetwork if the host address is all ones or all zeros but the subnet address is a combination or zeros and ones. Instead of making many copies of the packet, individually addressed to different hosts, all the host machines know to pay attention to broadcast packets, as well as to packets addressed to their specific individual host addresses. Depending on the age and type of IP equipment you use, broadcasts will be addressed using either all zeros or all ones, but not both. If your network requires zeros broadcasting, you must configure this through SNMP.

Packet header types

As previously mentioned, IP works with other protocols to allow communication over IP networks. When IP is used on an Ethernet network, IP works with the Ethernet or 802.3 framing standards, among other protocols. These two protocols specify two different ways to organize the very first signals in the sequence of electrical signals that make up an IP packet travelling over Ethernet. By default, the Netopia 4752 uses Ethernet packet headers for IP traffic. If your network requires 802.3 IP framing, you must configure this through SNMP.