If you do not know what an
IP address is, turn back now, and learn about those first, because
none of this will make sense otherwise.
Ok, those of you still with me,
good for you. We're going to breifly review IP Addresses' now.
Every interface on the internet must have an IP address assigned to it, according to the
TCP/IP Protocol. Most of these, are
routable IP adresses, meaning that they have an IP that can be routed (Duh). What does "Routable IP Address" Mean? Well, only routable IP addresses are allowed on
the Internet. Meaning that you can directly address them, through their home
router
However, nonroutable IP addresses cannot exist on the internet, because they are not allowed to. Why have nonroutable IP addresses, if they cannot exist on the internet? Because they are highly useful for
intranets.
Suppose your company has 10 computers, but only one IP given to you by your
ISP, yet you need to use all computers online at the same time? According to the
TCP/IP protocol, only one machine at a time may occupy a IP on a single
subnet. So, you have one machine accept the routable IP, and then use
NAT to allow the other 9 computers to use nonroutable IP addresses. This allows all computers to be routed through the same IP, which is then truly routed to the Internet.
I told you it was confusing.
Now, you might be asking what IP's are nonroutable. By definition, any IP that falls within the range of 10.0.0.0 and 10.255.255.255; 172.16.0.0 and 172.16.255.255; 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.255.255 (
inclusive), is nonroutable. Another nonroutable IP range is 127.0.0.0 to 127.255.255.255, because that is the
loopback IP range
More to come on this as I can think what I forgot.