Netgear WGE111 User Manual download pdf (Page 60)

User Manual for the NETGEAR WGE111 Wireless Game Adapter

B-6 Understanding IP Addresses

NETGEAR strongly recommends that you configure all hosts on a LAN segment to use the same

netmask for the following reasons:

• So that hosts recognize local IP broadcast packets.

When a device broadcasts to its segment neighbors, it uses a destination address of the local

network address with all ones for the host address. In order for this scheme to work, all devices

on the segment must agree on which bits comprise the host address.

• So that a local router or bridge recognizes which addresses are local and which are remote.

Private IP Addresses

If your networks are isolated from the Internet (for example, only between your two branch

offices), you can assign any IP addresses to the hosts without problems. However, the IANA has

reserved the following three blocks of IP addresses specifically for private networks:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255

172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

NETGEAR recommends that you choose your private network number from this range.

NETGEAR products default to 192.168.0.xxx or 192.168.1.1.

Regardless of your particular situation, do not create an arbitrary IP address; always follow the

guidelines explained here. For more information about address assignment, refer to RFC 1597,

Address Allocation for Private Internets, and RFC 1466, Guidelines for Management of IP

Address Space. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) publishes RFCs on its Web site at

www.ietf.org.

255.255.255.252 /30

255.255.255.254 /31

255.255.255.255 /32

Table 5-2. Netmask Formats

1 2 ... 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 ... 87 88

No comments

Netgear WGE111 User Manual Page 60