IP Addresses and ARP

1. IP Addressing
Submenu level: /ip address

Description

IP addresses serve for a general host identification purposes in IP networks. Typical (IPv4) address consists of four octets. For proper addressing the router also needs the network mask value, id est which bits of the complete IP address refer to the address of the host, and which - to the address of the network. The network address value is calculated by binary AND operation from network mask and IP address values. It's also possible to specify IP address followed by slash "/" and the amount of bits that form the network address.

In most cases, it is enough to specify the address, the netmask, and the interface arguments. The network prefix and the broadcast address are calculated automatically.

It is possible to add multiple IP addresses to an interface or to leave the interface without any addresses assigned to it. In case of bridging or PPPoE connection, the physical interface may bot have any address assigned, yet be perfectly usable. Putting an IP address to a physical interface included in a bridge would mean actually putting it on the bridge interface itself. You can use /ip address print detail to see to which interface the address belongs to.

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