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2026-06-12

IP Headers and Address Classes

networkIPv4IP addressingCCNApacket header

Headers in the network layer

  • >Version — four bits
  • >Internet Header Length (IHL) — four bits
  • >Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) — six bits
  • >Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) — two bits
  • >Total Length — two bytes
  • >Identification — two bytes
  • >Flags — three bits
  • >Fragment Offset — 13 bits
  • >Time to Live (TTL) — one byte
  • >Protocol — one byte
  • >Header Checksum — two bytes
  • >Source IP Address — four bytes
  • >Destination IP Address — four bytes
  • >One or more optional Options headers — variable length

IP addressing

  • >Used to identify a network interface on a logical IP network.
  • >IP addresses make it possible for any host to communicate with any other, regardless of location or physical network type.
  • >An IPv4 address is composed of 32 bits (4 bytes) and has both a host portion, which identifies a specific host and a network portion, which identifies which network the host belongs to.
  • >A subnet mask is used to differentiate what portion of the address is the host portion and what portion is the network.

Addressing classes

IP Address ClassClass AClass BClass C
First bit values (binary)010110
First byte value (decimal)0-127128-191192-223
Number of network identifier bits81624
Number of host identifier bits24168
Number of possible networks12616,3842,097,152
Number of possible hosts16,777,21465,534254

There is also a Class D, which is used for multicast, and a Class E, which is used for experimental purposes.

Class and header recall5 blanks

A Class A address uses network bits, Class B uses and Class C uses . In the IPv4 header, TTL is byte and the source address is bytes.

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Suhesh Kasti — AppSec & Offensive Security

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