On Sat, May 7, 2022, 5:19 PM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
On May 7, 2022, at 12:14 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary).
> In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead to many efforts
> to outright kill this notation.

On FreeBSD:
ping 10.2 tries to ping 10.0.0.2 and
ping 192.168.300 tries to ping 192.168.1.44 (1*2^8+44 == 300)
ping 10.2.300 tries to ping 10.2.1.44
ping 192.1000000 tries to ping 192.15.66.64 (15*2^15+66*2^8+64 == 1000000)
ping 1000000001 tries to ping 59.154.202.1 (59*2^24+154*2^16+202*2^8+1)
ping 300.300 tries to ping 23.217.138.110 (I haven't worked this out! Prob. a bug)
So the last number is treated as the host number on a given net.
This may have some sense in the classful network world but is
very confusing in the CIDR world.


We just know the dotted quad world. In the early days of sparse addresses and crappy name service (or out of date host files) these shortcuts were a lifesaver.

WarnerÂ