Network Failure
I was at a client today that told me he had a network problem. When I got to his computer, his network settings looked like this:
Click on image for full view
That is wrong. I thought I’d tell you how network IP settings work.
The IP adress is like a normal residential address.
The first set of digits (up to 3), Before the first dot, can be the city you are sending a packet to.
The 2nd set of digits (up to 3), before the second dot, can be thought of as the suburb you live in.
The 3rd set of digits, before the third dot, can be thought of as the street you live in.
the 4th set of digits, after the 3rd dot, can be thought of as your street number.
The correct IP address for a given network can look like this. 192.168.1.5 or 10.0.0.2 or 200.200.201.1
so the 192 can be translated into “Cape Town”
168 can be translated into “Tokai”
1 can be translated into “Tokai rd”
and the 5 could be “nr 21″
A computer wont understand a normal address, so it turns it into numbers.
Local Network
On your local network everyone will have the same first 3 sets of digits, the last one will be different. If it is not, there is a problem. It would then mean 2 different computers life in the same address and the packets won’t know where to go.
So your local network is “in the same road” but on different locations.
Later I will explain what the Subnet mask means. The 255.255.255.0
Let me know if you understand what I wrote here. If not, ask and I will try and explain again
1. Network Failure
2. Subnet mask, the way it works
