Re: Color me stupid...
- From: Steve Baker <ice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: technocracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 22:26:38 -0500
Hunter <hunters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> http://3626198025/ is a valid webpage. It would appear to map to 217.35.100.9
> and a DNS name of angelfire.com.
>
> Would someone please explain to me what this number (3626198025) is, and why
> this works? Some sort of networking standard I'm unaware of or what?
That IP number is actually 216.35.100.9, not 217.35.100.9, had me confused
for a minute. Using ping will give you the sites IP straight away.
An IP number is formed from 4 bytes (hence the dot-quad notation normally
used), each number in the range 0-255. However for some strange reason, the
resolver allows you to combine the numbers into one long word and use that
as an IP address. So what you see above is the long word representation of
216.35.100.9 or: (216*(2^24)) + (35*(2^16)) + (100*(2^8)) + 9.
Why the standard allows this is beyond me, other than the fact that
internally the computer stores the IP in a longword, so it's pretty easy to
get the resolver to support it. It's a favorite trick of spammers to attempt
to hide their true origin.
- Steve
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