C IP A DDRESSINGThis chapter provides some background detail on the IP information thatneeds to be assigned to your Switch to enable you to manage it across anetwork. The topics covered are:■ IP Addresses■ Subnets and Subnet Masks■ Default GatewaysIP addressing is a vast topic and there are white papers on the WorldWide Web and publications available if you wish to learn more about IPaddressing.IP Addresses This IP address section is divided into two parts:■ Simple Overview — Gives a brief overview of what an IP address is.■ Advanced Overview — Gives a more in depth explanation of IPaddresses and the way they are structured.Simple Overview To operate correctly, each device on your network must have a unique IPaddress. IP addresses have the format n.n.n.n where n is a decimalnumber between 0 and 255. An example IP address is ‘192.168.100.8’.The IP address can be split into two parts:■ The first part, called the network part, (‘192.168’ in the example)identifies the network on which the device resides.■ The second part, called the host part, (‘100.8’ in the example)identifies the device within the network.If your network is internal to your organization only, you may use anyarbitrary IP address. 3Com suggests you use addresses in the series
