Classless and Subnet Address

Extensions (CIDR)

Chapter 10

Introduction
Five extensions of the IP address scheme,
designed to conserve network prefixes

Transparent routers
Proxy ARP
Subnet Addressing
Anonymous Point-To-Point Networks
Classless Addressing

Relevant Facts
In the original IP addressing scheme:
Each network is assigned a unique network address
Each host on that network has the network address as a
prefix of the hosts address

Advantage of this scheme:

Routers keep one routing entry per network
Only the network portion of the address is examined
when making routing decisions

Relevant Facts
Remember original IP addresses
Class A: 8 bit network id, 24 bit host id
Class B: 16 bit network id, 16 bit host id
Class C: 24 bit network id, 8 bit host id

Sites may modify this scheme as long as:

All hosts and routers agree to the modified scheme
Other sites on the Internet can treat addresses as a
network prefix and a host suffix

Minimizing Network Numbers

Growth has made the original addressing
scheme unfeasible for the future
Overhead of managing network addresses
Routing tables are large and exchanging routing
information requires significant effort
Address space will be exhausted (see p. 148)

Three ways of sharing one network among

multiple physical networks follows

Transparent Routers
A router is used to make it look as though
several hosts are connected to a WAN
It is transparent because other routers and
hosts on the WAN do not know that it exists
The router is connected to hosts in a local
area network on one side (as a multiplexer),
and to a single host port of the WAN on the
other

H1
Wide Area
Network

H2
T
H3
H4

T is a transparent router connecting multiple

hosts to a WAN. Hosts are assigned addresses
as if they connected directly to the WAN.

Transparent Routers
The local area network does not have its own
IP prefix
The router demultiplexes datagrams that
arrive from the WAN and sends them to the
host using a table of addresses
The router also accepts datagrams from the
hosts and sends them across the WAN to the
destinations

Transparent Routers
Advantages
requires fewer network addresses since the LAN does
not need a separate IP prefix
supports load balancing

Disadvantages
works with networks with a large number of host
addresses
good for class A, not good for class C

may not provide allservices (ICMP and SNMP)

Proxy ARP
Applies to networks that use ARP to bind
internet addresses to physical addresses
Allows one network address to be shared by
two physical networks
A router which runs proxy ARP answers ARP
requests on each network for hosts on the
other network
Also called: ARP hack and promiscuous ARP

Main Network
H1

H2

H3
Router running proxy ARP
R

H4
Hidden Network

H5

Proxy ARP
When H1 needs to talk to H4, it uses ARP
R captures the ARP request from H1 and
responds with Rs physical address
H1 sends datagrams destined for H4 to R
R looks in its routing table to route the
datagram on to H4 on the hidden network

Proxy ARP
Advantage
It can be added to a single router without
changing the routing tables in other hosts or
routers on this network

Disadvantages
Only works on networks that use ARP
Spoofing: one machine claims to be another

Subnet Addressing
Most widely used technique of the 3
Standardized, required part of IP addressing
A single site has a single class B address
assigned to it, but has 2 or more networks
Only local routers know that there are
multiple networks at this site

Network 128.10.1.0
128.10.1.1
128.10.1.2
H1

Rest of the
Internet

H2

all traffic to
128.10.0.0

H4

H3
128.10.2.1

Network 128.10.2.0

128.10.2.2

Subnet Addressing
The address 128.10.0.0 is used for both
networks at the site
Routers in the internet send to either
network as though it was a single network
Only R knows that there are two networks
and looks at the third octet to route
The two networks are called subnets

Subnet Addressing
Instead of dividing the 32-bit IP address into
(netid, hostid), we use (net portion, local portion)
The interpretation of the local portion of the
address is left to the site
The net or internet portion identifies a site
The local portion identifies a physical network
and a host

Subnet Addressing
Conceptual 32-bit address in original addressing
with conceptual subnet addressing
Hierarchical addressing and hierarchical routing
Internet part

Internet part

Local part

Physical
Network

Host

Flexibility in Subnet Address

Assignment
Sites are allowed flexibility in choice of address
assignment
To the rest of the
R1
Internet
Network 1
R2
Network 2
R4
Network 4

R5
Network 5

Network 3

R3

Flexibility in Subnet Address

Assignment
See Figure 10.6
For fixed length subnetting
When a site has a large number of subnets, the
number of hosts must be small
When a site has a large number of hosts, the number
of subnets will be small

Variable Length Subnets

An organization may choose a partition
size for each physical network
Since the organization may have large and
small networks, this gives flexibility to the site

Disadvantage:
Possible address ambiguity

Subnets with Masks

For subnetting of either kind, a 32-bit subnet
mask specifies the division
Bits in the mask are set to 1 if machines on the
network treat the corresponding bit in the address
as part of the subnet prefix, 0 if not
Example:
the mask 11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
says the first 3 octets identify the network, and the fourth
identifies the host

Subnets with Masks

Subnet masks do not necessarily have to select
contiguous bits of the address, i.e.:
11111111 11111111 00011000 01000000
not recommended!

Subnet Mask Representation

Masks may be represented in dotted decimal
(binary is difficult)
as in 255.255.255.0

They may be represented as a 3-tuple

{network #, subnet #, host #} where -1 means all ones
{-1, -1, 0} is 255.255.255.0
{128.23, -1, 0} is 128.23.255.0

Routing with Subnets

Hosts connected to networks that are not subnetted
must communicate with hosts on networks that are
subnetted
Rule: To achieve optimal routing, a machine M must
use subnet routing for an IP network address N, unless
there is a single path P such that P is a shortest path
between M and every physical network that is a subnet
of N.

Routing with Subnets

Guideline: All subnets of a given network IP
address must be contiguous, the subnet masks
should be uniform across all networks, and all
machines should participate in subnet routing.

Questions
How does this modify the routing algorithm?
How are subnet masks assigned?
How do we broadcast to subnets?

Anonymous Point to Point

Networks
When a leased line connects two routers,
the line and the two routers are not given
addresses
No hardware address is needed
The interface software ignores the next hop
address when sending datagrams
The connection is known as an unnumbered
network, or anonymous network

128.10.0.0

128.211.0.0

R1
1

leased line

R2

128.10.2.250
To reach hosts
on network
128.10.0.0
default

128.211.0.100
Route To

Using Interface #

Deliver Direct
128.211.0.100
Routing Table in R1

1
2

Classless Addressing
Allows addresses assigned to a single
organization to span multiple classes
Why adopted?
The classful scheme did not divide network addresses
into classes equally (<17K class B networks, >2M class
C networks)
Class C addresses were assigned slowly
Class B addresses would be exhausted (Running out of
address space ROADS)

Classless Addressing
(Supernetting)
Consider a medium-sized organization that
joins the Internet
A class B address is preferred over a class C
But the organization may be given a block of 256
contiguous class C addresses
This would also be a useful way to have Internet
Service Providers (ISPs) provide IP addresses to an
organization
The ISP allocates addresses from the set to subscribers

Supernetting Effects on Routing

A new problem is created:
Now routing table is increased incredibly
Instead of one class B address, we now have 256
class C addresses

How can the problem be fixed?

Collapsing a block of contiguous addresses into a
single entry: (network address, count)
network address is the smallest @ in the block
count is the number of network @s in the block

Supernetting Effects on Routing

Example:
The pair (127.92.61.25, 4) specifies the four
network addresses

127.92.61.25
127.92.61.26
127.92.61.27
127.92.61.28

Routing tables can be smaller

CIDR
What has just been described is Classless
Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)
The name does not indicate that it also involves
addressing
It is not restricted to Class C addresses
It does not really use an integer, but requires
that the number of blocks is a power of two,
and this power is identified using a bit mask

CIDR
Example:
An organization is assigned a block of 2048
contiguous addresses, beginning at
128.211.168.0
lowest: 128.211.168.0
10000000 11010011 10100000 00000000
highest: 128.211.175.255
10000000 11010011 10101111 11111111

CIDR
CIDR requires 2 things:
The lowest address in the block
A 32-bit mask which shows where the division
between prefix and suffix occurs
11111111 11111111 11111000 00000000

after the 21st bit in this case

CIDR Notation
A shorthand way of representing the address
and the mask length is also called slash
notation
The block of addresses is indicated by the
first address followed by a decimal
indicating the bit position 21
128.211.168.0/21
See figure 10.11 for CIDR prefixes

CIDR Example
Work problem in Section 10.21

Summary
Techniques have been invented to conserve IP
addresses:
Extend the address space of a single network to include
hosts on an attached local network
A router answers ARP requests for hosts
Share one IP network address among several networks
Let a point-to-point connection be unnumbered
Allow division between prefix and suffix to occur
anywhere