Network Engineer Mock Interview
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Question 16 of 30
What are the IP classes that make up an IP address?
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A key skill every qualified network engineer should possess is to break down complex concepts into simple terms. An interviewer may ask you a question similar to this one to test your ability to do this. They may not be interested in your specific answer to this question but rather how you go about formulating it. As with most questions, keep your answers direct and be prepared for a follow-up question which the interviewer will use to explore the topic in more detail.
William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
"An IP address has four sets or octets of numbers each with a value up to 255. These are known as IP classes. There are three types of IP classes. Each is based on the first octet of IP addresses and is classified as A, B or C. For example, If the first octet begins with 0 bit, then it is of type Class A. Class A has a range up to 127.x.x.x. If it starts with bits 10, it belongs to Class B and ranges from 128.x to 191.x. Finally, the IP class belongs to Class C if the octet starts with bits 110 and has a range from 192.x to 223.x."
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The classes that make up an IP address are Class A, B, C, D, and E. An IP address can be either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. IPv6 was intended to replace IPv4, as IPv4 was starting to get depleted. However, due to NAT and PAT, this has not been a big concern, although IPv6 is still widely used in networking. For this question, I will stick with IPv4. IPv4 is a 32-bit address made up of four octets, each containing 8-bit binary numbers of either 1 or 0. Each octet decimal value can range from 0 to 255. Private IP addresses are in class A, B, or C, with Class A private IPs in the range of 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255, class B private IPs of 172.16.0.0 to 172.16.255.255, and class C private IPs of 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255. The remaining IP addresses are usually considered public, but you also have reserved IP addresses, such as 127.0.0.1 - 127.255.255.255 and all the multicast addresses used for routing protocols such as EIGRP and OSPF.
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