another magicq question

[Keeper of the Keys]

Blocks of these addresses were assigned to different Regional Internet Registrars who in turn assigned them to ISPs, hosting providers, universities and big companies, and some blocks were set aside for private use.

The private blocks are:

10.0.0.0/8 (/8 means that 8 bits are the networkmask which is the same thing as saying 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0, in the "old days" this was known as a Class A network)

172.16.0.0/12 (1M addresses formed by 16 Class B networks)

192.168.0.0/16 (65k addresses, used to be known as a Class B)

 

And the biggest folly of all:

127.0.0.0/8 was set aside for the computer to communicate with itself, 16M addresses down the drain for the loopback (localhost) network.

 

2.0.0.0/8 on the other hand is _not_ a private network, it or parts of it are assigned to different bodies that fall under the "jurisdiction" of RIPE (the European/ME/Central Asia RIR)

 

Edit:

Forgot the link-local network:

169.254.0.0/16 - Again class B, only available for computers to talk to each other directly, you'll notice on windows machines that if they fail to "obtain" an address they will set themselves to an address in this range.