Class-based IP Version 4 Addressing, continued
When describing Internet addresses (verbally or in literature)
a dotted decimal notation is used to describe the 32-bit addresses.
#
130.95.1.10 www www.csse.uwa.edu.au
130.95.1.8 budgie budgie.csse.uwa.edu.au
130.95.116.32 laser25 laser25.csse.uwa.edu.au
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130.95.252.64 ecm-csse2101-l.uniwa.uwa.edu.au
130.95.252.112 ecm-csse2101-x.uniwa.uwa.edu.au
The different (hardware) encoding of 32-bit integers between architectures
demands a standard representation for Internet addresses.
The Internet standard for byte order specifies that integers are sent most
significant byte first (big-endian).
A number of standard C, Python, and Java library functions (methods, classes...)
map Internet addresses to and from network standard ordering,
Ethernet addresses and character strings
(see Unix/Linux manuals for inet, ethers and ntohl).
Another significant problem with the Internet addressing scheme is that if a
host moves from one network to another,
it must change Internet addresses (consider the impact on
mobile-computing).
Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726,
provided the earliest literary reference to computers,
in which a machine would write books.
This early attempt at artificial intelligence was characteristically
marked by its inventor's call for public funding and the employment of
student operators.
Gulliver's diagram of the machine actually contained errors,
these being either an attempt to protect his invention or the first
computer hardware glitch.
The term endian
is used because of an analogy with the story Gulliver's
Travels, in which Swift imagined a never-ending fight between
the kingdoms of the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians
(whether you were Lilliputian or Brobdignagian),
whose only difference is in where they crack open a hard-boiled egg.
CITS3002 Computer Networks, Lecture 7, The TCP/IP protocol suite, p10, 17th April 2024.
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CITS3002
