NiagaraAX and networking

NiagaraAX and networking - About IP addressing

In the most widely installed level of the Internet Protocol (IP) today, an IP address is a 32-bit number that identifies each sender or receiver of information that is sent in packets across the network. IP addresses are actually made up of two parts, the network portion (identifies a particular network) and the host portion (identifies a particular device).

The network portion is used to determine whether other IP addresses are on the local network or a remote network. On the network, between the router that moves packets from one point to another along the route - only the network part of the address is looked at. All hosts on a given network share the same network number and can communicate with one another without being routed through an IP router.

In addition to the network address or number, information is needed about which specific machine (or host) on the network is sending or receiving a message. So the IP address needs both the unique network number and a host number (the host number must be unique within the network). The host number is sometimes called a local or machine address.

All NiagaraAX devices are configured with an IP address. An IP address is assigned to a host by an administrator and is not hardware specific, but rather is configured through a software interface on each host.