Invincible Internet: The Evolution of Internet Protocol Addressing
The internet evolved out of a defense department research project in the 1970s designed to create a communications system that could survive a nuclear attack. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn did not originally intend for the internet to evolve into an inescapable force that would reshape life as we knew it. Programmers often repackage and redesign old code to fit a new project plan. The first 3 numbers of an IPv4 address reveal the class of an IP address. IPv4 addresses organize into 5 classes. The majority of IPv4 addresses used on home systems are from class C. We know that all of the IPv4 classes are not really assigned simply by looking at class A. All of the addresses in class A begin with a 0 - 127. In binary format, class A encompasses all of the addresses that begin with a 0. All other addresses begin with a 1. Therefore, half of the addresses (around 17 million IP addresses) belong to class A. IANA owns over half of Class A addresses. A short list of major companies,...