Why is the standart IP for the firewall *.*.*.254 ?

Ragnar

Every where I look the name of the firewall is *.254...

Why

I always use *.*.*.1
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hmmmmm, gentoo.

puddpunk · l33t Joined: 20 Jul 2002 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand

whats the difference...

They are both legal IP addresses. you can have your IP *.*.*.69 if it turns you on but it doesnt really matter.

I guess the higher nubers are reserved for services (such as a gateway (*.*.*.254) and the broadcast (*.*.*.255) so when you start adding clients, you can just use 1,2,3,4,5...

Ragnar · Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2002 9:44 am Post subject:

OK

I just wondered
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hmmmmm, gentoo.

klieber · Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2002 12:48 pm Post subject:

Mostly, it's just a convention. Network devices, such as routers and firewalls, tend to bookend a particular netblock of IP addresses. I see routers most often on the *.1 address and DNS servers and/or firewalls on the *.254 end of things (assuming a 24 bit net mask)

When you get into the enterprise environment where you have hundreds of routers and dozens of firewalls, it just makes it easier to have a convention which says, "all routers will always use the first IP address of any netblock".

However, there is absolutely no technical reason why it *has* to be this way.

--kurt
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