7. What challenges arise regarding the uniqueness of IP addresses across the entire internet, and how are private networks and Network Address Translation (NAT) involved?
If a host is connected to multiple subnets, it has at least one IP address per subnet. Each host's IP address should be unique across the entire internet, when going into more details, private networks and Network Adrress translatin makes it confusing.
Each host connected to the internet must have a unique IP address to ensure proper communication. Ensuring unique IP addresses for each internet-connected host is challenging due to limited IPv4 availability. Private networks use reserved ranges, and for internet access, Network Address Translation (NAT) lets multiple devices share a single public IP. This can cause confusion, as externally, multiple hosts in different private networks may appear to share the same public IP address.
To connect with the internet , every machine should be assigned with public IP address. One machine can have multiple physical interfaces and virtual internal addresses. The major issue with the IPv4 is the address exhaustion with limited address space. When IPv4 was introduced , it was not expected that the user count would reach millions. To prevent the shortage of IPv4 addresses, private network is introduced.
There are two ways for internet access in the small network such as home , business or enterprise. The first method is you can purchase public IP from Internet Service Provider which is expensive and waste of public addresses. The second method is that router assigns private IP to the devices connected. When user wants to connect with the internet,router converts or translates the private IP to that given public IP address by Network Address Translation.
