[Python-Dev] PEP 3144 review. (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Fri Sep 18 05🔞00 CEST 2009

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:04:46 am Andrew McNamara wrote:

>To a non-specialist, "the network address" is ambiguous. There are > many addresses in a network, and none of them are the entire > network. It's like saying, given a list [2, 4, 8, 12], what's "the > list item"?

A "network address" is an IP address and mask, but I understand your confusion - we're mixing terminology from disperate domains. In my postings, I have tried to refer to Network (a containter) and Address (an item).

So to clarify, how many different things which need to be handled are there?

Items: 1 IP address -- a 32 bit (IPv4) or 128 bit (IPv6) number 2 Netmask -- a bit mask of the form 111..100..0 3 Network address -- the lowest address in a network, and equal to (defined by?) the bitwise-AND of any address in the network with the network's netmask 4 Host address -- the part of the IP address that is not masked by the netmask 5 Broadcast address -- the highest address in a IPv4 network

Containers: 6 Network -- a range of IP address

Have I missed anything or got anything wrong?

-- Steven D'Aprano

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