network+address from FOLDOC

network address

1. The network portion of an IP address. For a class A network, the network address is the first byte of the IP address. For a class B network, the network address is the first two bytes of the IP address. For a class C network, the network address is the first three bytes of the IP address. In each case, the remainder is the host address. In the Internet, assigned network addresses are globally unique.

See also subnet address, Internet Registry.

2. (Or "net address") An electronic mail address on the network. In the 1980s this might have been a bang path but now (1997) it is nearly always a domain address. Such an address is essential if one wants to be to be taken seriously by hackers; in particular, persons or organisations that claim to understand, work with, sell to, or recruit from among hackers but *don't* display net addresses are quietly presumed to be clueless poseurs and mentally flushed.

Hackers often put their net addresses on their business cards and wear them prominently in contexts where they expect to meet other hackers face-to-face (e.g. science-fiction fandom). This is mostly functional, but is also a signal that one identifies with hackerdom (like lodge pins among Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans). Net addresses are often used in e-mail text as a more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names without ever learning each others' real monikers.

Network Addressable Unit

<networking>

(NAU) The SNA term for an addressable entity. Examples include PUs, LUs, and SSCPs.

Last updated: 1997-05-10

Network Address Translation

<networking>

(NAT, or Network Address Translator, Virtual LAN) A technique in which a router or firewall rewrites the source and/or destination Internet addresses in a packet as it passes through, typically to allow multiple hosts to connect to the Internet via a single external IP address. NAT keeps track of outbound connections and distributes incoming packets to the correct machine.

NAT is an alternative to adopting IPv6 (IPng). It allows the same IP addresses (10.x.x.x is the conventional range) to be used on many private local networks while requiring only one of the increasingly scarce public addresses to be allocated to each private network.

NAT does not however allow an external service to initiate a TCP connection to an internal host, nor does it support stateless protocols based on UDP well unless the router software has extensions to support each specific protocol.

Last updated: 2005-09-18

Network Address Translator

Network Address Translation

Nearby terms:

network ♦ network address ♦ Network Addressable Unit ♦ Network Address Translation

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