AirLive WN-350R - Manual (Page 173)

4. Appendix
WN-350R User’s Manual 164
IP Address and Network (Subnet) Mask: IP stands for Internet Protocol. An
IP address consists of a series of four numbers separated by periods, which
identifies a single, unique Internet computer host in an IP network. Example:
192.168.1.254. It consists of 2 portions: the IP network address, and the host
identifier.
The IP address is a 32-bit binary pattern, which can be represented as four
cascaded decimal numbers separated by “.”: aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa, where each
“aaa” can be anything from 000 to 255, or as four cascaded binary numbers
separated by “.”: bbbbbbbb.bbbbbbbb.bbbbbbbb.bbbbbbbb, where each “b”
can either be 0 or 1.
A network mask is also a 32-bit binary pattern, and consists of consecutive
leading
1’s followed by consecutive trailing 0’s, such as
11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000. Therefore sometimes a network mask
can also be described simply as “x” number of leading 1’s.
When both are represented side by side in their binary forms, all bits in the IP
address that correspond to 1’s in the network mask become part of the IP
network address, and the remaining bits correspond to the host ID.
For example, if the IP address for a device is, in its binary form,
11011001.10110000.10010000.00000111, and if its network mask is,
11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000
It means the device’s network address is
11011001.10110000.10010000.00000000, and its host ID is,
00000000.00000000.00000000.00000111. This is a convenient and efficient
method for routers to route IP packets to their destination.