Explanation about IP address

[fellow]

I'm new to networking and would appriciate any explaination:
what happens if I configure my own Ip address to be one that is allready registerd to someone else. Why wouldent it work? What holds back my router from broadcasting this as my IP address?
Not that I want to do this, just so I understand.

 

[CTR]

If you just pick an address out of the blue, your traffic won't route.

You are asking a really broad question so read this page at whatis.com and then post again.

 

[digitalman]

here is a really generic answer to you question that i think will help. For the purpose of this exaple let's assume that you are up late one night and for some reason you decide you HAVE to have one of these infomecial products.

You race over to the phone and call imeadiatly (becouse if you act now you get the bonus product for free). when you get the opperator on the phone you give her you Credit Card info. Then she asks for the shipping address. Just for giggles, you make up a totally bogus address.

Days go by- No Product. Weeks go by, No product. After several months, you finally call up and ask where your "spew-a-matic" is. after waiting on hold for a hour or so (long distance of course) they finially tell you that the product was returned to sender for incorrect address.

Now, back to IP addresses- if you just make one up any info that you try to send or recieve through any type of network will not be transmitted.

I hope this humorus example helps
dm

 

[digitalman]

i forgot to add one more thing.... if more then one person has the same address, how does the requested info know which of all of the same requests made it? while it appears that this would allow you to "fool" the network to believe that there is only one computer (becouse there is only one IP address) this cannot exist. if you did you wouldn't be able to share resourses as they transmit info through tcp/ip- which needs unique ip addresses.

so the question is- why would you want to make all the IP addresses the same?

to take a shot in the dark, if you looking to hook up more then one computer toan isp (like a cable or dsl provider) that technichly only allows one ip address, there are better ways to accomplish this then just making all IP addresses the same. This is one of the great things about broadband routers.

if this is your question there are many people within this forum that can help you.
dm

 

[bhuie]

<< I'm new to networking and would appriciate any explaination:
what happens if I configure my own Ip address to be one that is allready registerd to someone else. Why wouldent it work? What holds back my router from broadcasting this as my IP address?
Not that I want to do this, just so I understand.
>>



If the IP address is not in the correct subnet, then it won't work at all. If you configure the IP to be the same as someone else's IP on the same subnet, then each one might work some of the time, depending on which PC the ARP entry for that IP address points to on your router/other PC's on the subnet. (I'm assuming your talking about configuring a PC and not a router.)

 

[TerreApart]

If you do not have a networking background i'll try not to be technical. Here goes:
&quot;what happens if I configure my own Ip address to be one that is allready registerd to someone else&quot;

(let me ask you)What do you think will happen if you change your mailbox to read the same address as your neighbor? Do you think you will trick the mailman into placing mail in the wrong box? If your mailman has been delivering mail for over 5 years on the same route, you wont trick him, and computers have even better memories than people you won't trick them either.

Besides, just like the mailman only has 1 letter to deliver to only one of the boxes, network packets only travel in single segments, they won't split into 2 just because there are 2 addresses.(so either way only 1 computer would get the info)

&quot;Why wouldent it work? What holds back my router from broadcasting this as my IP address?&quot;

In order for your router to connect to any network segment it will always check and be checked to insure it does not carry duplicate info that may already exist on that segment.(i.e. duplicate addresses)

You could configure the router to hold the exact address info, but once it connects it will be rejected as a duplicate.

Hope this helps...