On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:36:05PM -0700, Kendall Shaw wrote: | In the networking section of the OpenBSD FAQ it suggests reading | "Understanding IP addressing": | | http://www.3com.com/other/pdfs/infra/corpinfo/en_US/501302.pdf | | I'm having a hard time understanding it. In many places they use 2 | numbers, e.g. 2(21) or 232 (4,294,967,296). Can you understand what they | are saying? | | For example, on page 3: | | "IPv4 defines a 32-bit address which means that there are | only 232 (4,294,967,296) IPv4 addresses available." | | 232 what?
That is '2^32', the 32 are probably superscripted. It means two to the power of thirty-two which turns out to be a bit more than 4 billion. | On page 11: | | "The first step in the planning process is to take the maximum number of | subnets required and round up to the nearest power of two. For example, | if an organization needs nine subnets, 23 (or 8) will not provide | enough subnet addressing space, so the network administrator will | need to round up to 24 (or 16)." | | 23 or 8 what? Bits? What are 23 and 8 alternatives of? 24 or 16 looks | like alternative prefix lengths for class A or B networks, but I don't | get 23 or 8. Again, 2^3 and 2^4 which work out to 8 and 16 respectively. Again, the exponents are probably superscripted. Cheers, Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd -- >++++++++[<++++++++++>-]<+++++++.>+++[<------>-]<.>+++[<+ +++++++++++>-]<.>++[<------------>-]<+.--------------.[-] http://www.weirdnet.nl/