Addressing and DNS Clients

Understanding addresses

A basic understanding of Internet Protocol (IP) address and subnet mask concepts is required for engineering your IP network.

IP address

The IP address is a 32-bit binary number that has four parts (octets). This set of four octets has two segments, depending on the class of IP address. The first segment identifies the network. The second identifies the hosts or devices on the network. The subnet mask marks a boundary between these two sub-addresses.

Dynamic or static addressing

For any computer to communicate with a module, the computer must be configured to either

  • use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). In this case, when not connected to the network, the computer derives an IP address on the 169.254 network within two minutes.
  • have an assigned static IP address (for example, 169.254.1.5) on the 169.254 network.

NOTE: If an IP address that is set in the module is not the 169.254.x.x network address, then the network operator must assign the computer a static IP address in the same subnet.

When a DHCP server is not found

To operate on a network, a computer requires an IP address, a subnet mask, and possibly a gateway address. Either a DHCP server automatically assigns this configuration information to a computer on a network or an operator must input these items.

When a computer is brought on line and a DHCP server is not accessible (such as when the server is down or the computer is not plugged into the network), Microsoft and Apple operating systems default to an IP address of 169.254.x.x and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 (169.254/16, where /16 indicates that the first 16 bits of the address range are identical among all members of the subnet).

DNS Client

The DNS Client is used to resolve names of management servers within the operator’s management domain (see Figure 27). This feature allows hostname configuration for NTP servers, Authorization Servers, DHCP relay servers, and SNMP trap servers. Operators may choose to either enter in the FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) for the host name or to manually enter the IP addresses of the servers.