IP Address Classes

The IPv4 address scheme is limited by potentially wasteful address

allocation. For example, the jump from class C (one octet, or ~254 addresses) to class B (two octets, or ~65334 addresses) is quite large.

So, a company with more than 250 computers might request a class B address, but use far less than the ~65,000 possible combinations.

This inefficiency consumes the address space quickly.

Solutions include more efficient number allocations, ip chaining (firewalls), and migration to IPv6 (128 bit address), . . . even IPv8.

Java’s underlying native code has support for IPv6, so it will be ready if/when companies (notably Cisco) decide to embrace IPv6.

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