- Freecom Router User Manual

If your local network is not connected to the Internet (for example, when using

NAT), you can assign any IP addresses to your computers without problems. But

to prevent problems and ease configuration, the IANA has reserved the follow-

ing three blocks of IP addresses specifically for private networks:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255

172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

We recommend that you choose your private network number from this range.

The DHCP server of the FSG-3 is preconfigured to automatically assign private

addresses.

For more information about address assignment, refer to RFC 1597, Address

Allocation for Private Internets, and RFC 1466, Guidelines for Management of IP

Address Space. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) publishes RFCs on its

Web site at www.ietf.org.

The IP address shortage

The Internet has grown larger than anyone ever imagined it could be. Although

the exact size is unknown, the current estimate is that there are about 100

million hosts and more than 350 million users actively on the Internet. In fact, the

rate of growth has been such that the Internet is effectively doubling in size each

year.

When IP addressing first came out, everyone thought that there were plenty of

addresses to cover any need. Theoretically, you could have 4,294,967,296 unique

addresses (232). The actual number of available addresses is smaller (somewhere

between 3.2 and 3.3 billion) because of the way that the addresses are separated

into classes, and because some addresses are set aside for multicasting, testing

or other special uses.

With the explosion of the Internet and the increase in home networks and

business networks, the number of available IP addresses is simply not enough.

The obvious solution is to redesign the address format to allow for more possible

addresses. This is being developed (called IPv6), but will take many years to

implement because it requires modification of the entire infrastructure of the

Internet.

There are 2 systems in place now to help bring down the shortage of IP addresses.

Appendix