number, and a piece of the overall message to be sent. Different packets in a single message can take a variety of routes to the destination and they can arrive at different times. For this reason, the sequence number is used to reassemble the packets in the proper order at the destination. • Switch A network device that connects multiple hosts together and forwards packets based on their destination within the local network which is commonly known as a Local Area Network (LAN). • Router A device that receives and analyzes packets and then routes them towards their destination. In some cases, a router will send a packet to another router. In other cases, it will send it directly to its destination. Routers are used to connect one network to another network. • IP Address Every device on the Internet (personal computer, a tablet, a smartphone, etc.) is assigned a unique identifying number called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Originally, the IPv4 (version 4) standard was used. It had a format of four numbers with values ranging from 0 and 255 separated by a period. For example, the domain Dell.com has the IPv4 address 107.23.196.166. The IPv4 standard has a limit of 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. As the use of the Internet has grown, the number of IP addresses needed has increased to the point where the use of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted. This has led to the new IPv6 standard. The IPv6 standard is formatted as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, such as 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:7334. The IPv6 standard has a limit of 3.4×10 38 possible addresses. For example, the domain LinkedIn.com has an IPv6 address of: [2620:109:c002::6cae:a0a]. You probably noticed that the address has only five groups of numbers. That’s because IPv6 allows the use of two semi-colons (::) to indicate groups that are all zeroes and do not need to be displayed. For more detail about the IPv6 standard, see this Wikipedia article. • Domain name If you had to try to remember the IP address of
Information Systems for Business and Beyond (2019) pg. 93
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