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INTERNET TECHNOLOGY AND WEB DESIGN

Chapter : 2.4 Internet Addressing Scheme

Topic : 2.4.1 IP Address

IP Address
• As with any other network-layer protocol, the IP addressing scheme is integral to
the process of routing IP datagrams through an internetwork.
• Each IP address has specific components and follows a basic format. These IP
addresses can be subdivided and used to create addresses for subnetworks.
• Each host on a TCP/IP network is assigned a unique 32-bit logical address that
is divided into two main parts
 Network number
 Host number
• Network Number
 The network number identifies a network and must be assigned by the
Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) if the network is to be part of
the Internet.
 An Internet Service Provider (ISP) can obtain blocks of network addresses
from the InterNIC and can itself assign address space as necessary.
• Host number
 The host number identifies a host on a network and is assigned by the local
network administrator.
• IP Address Format
 The 32-bit IP address is grouped eight bits at a time, separated by dots, and
represented in decimal format (known as dotted decimal notation).
 Each bit in the octet has a binary weight (128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1).
 The minimum value for an octet is 0, and the maximum value for an octet is
255.
 The following FIG 2.9 shows the basic format of an IP address. An IP address
consists of 32 bits, grouped into four octets.

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FIG 2.9 : IP Address format

• IP Address Classes
 IP addressing supports five different address classes: A, B,C, D, and E.
 Only classes A, B, and C are available for commercial use.
 The left-most (high-order) bits indicate the network class. The following table
provides reference information about the five IP address classes.

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FIG 2.10 : Reference Information About the Five IP Address Classes

FIG 2.11 : IP address formats for commercial use

 The class of address can be determined easily by examining the first octet of
the address and mapping that value to a class range in the following table.

 In an IP address of 172.31.1.2, for example, the first octet is 172. Because

172 falls between 128 and 191, 172.31.1.2 is a Class B address

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FIG 2.12 : First octet of each address class

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Chapter : 2.4 Internet Addressing Scheme

Topic : 2.4.2 E-mail Addresses

E-mail Addresses
• Email is a message distributed by electronic means from one computer user to
one or more recipients via a network.
• One of the many similarities between email and regular mail is the need for
addressing.
• For a message to be delivered, it is necessary for the sender to specify the
recipient and provide a reasonable amount of information to indicate how and
where the recipient can be reached.
• In TCP/IP email, a standard electronic mail address format is used for this, and
support is also provided for alternative addressing schemes that may be used in
special cases.
• All communication on an internetwork requires some way of specifying the
identity of the intended recipient of the communication.
• Most application protocols, such as the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), use conventional TCP/IP contracts, IP
addresses and port numbers to specify the destination of information to be sent.
• The IP address normally identifies a particular host computer, and the port
number indicates a software process or application running on that computer.
• E-mail, however uses a model for communication that differs from most
applications.
• Email is not sent from one machine to another, as a file is transferred using FTP.
Instead, it is sent from one user to another. This is critical to the operation of the
entire system.
• For one thing, it allows someone to retrieve email that has been sent from any
number of different client computers. This allows the recipient to receive email
even when traveling, for example.
• Since e-mail messaging is user-based, the addressing scheme must also user-

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based.
• User cannot use conventional IP addresses and ports, so they need a distinct
system that specifies two primary pieces of information such as, who the user is
and where the user is located. These are, of course, analogous to a name and
address on a regular mail envelope.
• The idea of the user name is relatively straightforward but identifying the location
of the user is not.
• In regular mail, an address refers to a physical place. It would have been
possible to define email addresses in the same way, that is, to have an email
address refer to the user's client machine.
• However, recall the other important characteristic of email delivery, it is indirect
and based on the concept of a user's local Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
server holding received messages until they can be retrieved.
• The machine that the user employs to access their email may not even routinely
be connected to the Internet, and it may thus not be easy to identify. And they
also want a user to be able to access email from multiple machines.
• For all these reasons, people want addresses to identify not the user's specific
location at any particular time, but the place where the user's permanent mailbox
lives, on the user's SMTP server which is permanently connected to the Internet.

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Chapter : 2.4 Internet Addressing Scheme

Topic : 2.4.3 Resource Addresses

Resource Addresses
• When user using the web their browser act as a client program on their behalf.
• In order to fulfill their request, their browser will contact server, and ask for either
information or a service of some type.
URL(Uniform Resource Locator)
• URLs provide a standard way to specify the exact location and name of just
about any Internet resource.
• In general, most, URLs have one of two common formats
 scheme://host_name/description
 scheme: description
• Example 1: http://www.bryanadams.com/bryan
 This example describes a particular web page on a computer.
 The URL begins with a name, indicating a specific type of resource.( The
name comes from the protocol used to send and receive such information :
Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
• URLs and Host Names
 List of schemes used with URLs are in the below table
 Some examples of URLs that contain a host name
 http://www.wendy.com/~wendy
 fttp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/alt_tech/pointers.z
 telnet://nightmare.internet.com:1701/

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Scheme Meaning
ftp File accessed via file transfer protocol
gopher Gopher resource
http Hypertext resource
Mail to Mail a message to the specified
address
news Usenet newsgroup
telnet Interactive telnet session
wais Access a WAIS database

FIG 2.13 : List of URL Schemes

• URL and Port Numbers
 Each type of internet service has its own specific port number.
 Within a URL user only have to specify a port number if it is not the default for
that type of service.
 For example the default port number for Telnet is 23.
 The following two URLs are equivalent
 telnet://locis.loc.gov/
 telnet://locis.loc.gov:23/
 The HTTP service, by default, uses port 80.
 Similarly, the gopher service uses port 70.
 For instance, the following two URLs are equivalent. They both point to the
same hypertext resource, using port 80, on the computer named
www.wendy.com
 http://www.wendy.com/~wendy
 http://www.wendy.com:80/~wendy
• Path names
 Typical hypertext URL such as http://www.cathouse/humor/tech/data.from.bell
 The user can divide such URLs into three parts.
 The scheme (http:), the host name (in this case //www.cathouse.org/), and the
path_name (in this case cathouse/humor/tech/data.from.bell)

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 To analyze such a URL look at each of the parts
 The scheme (HTTP) identifies this resource as being hypertext.
 The host name is the name of the computer.
 The path name shows where on the host the hypertext resource is stored.

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