Which private network range do you use?

The default private LAN IP range seems to be 192.168.0.0 but 172.16.0.0 and 10.0.0.0 are also available. I can't imaging many people here have use for the 16 million private address 10.0.0.0 offers, but I wonder if anyone does use the 'other' ranges. And why?

I'm kinda attracted to the 10.0.0.0 range. I think 10.11.12.13 might be an easier address to remember than 192.168.99.87.

Not interested in IPv6 addresses internally. They're not human usable as far as I'm concerned.

There is also the 169.254.0.0/16 link local range to throw in the mix. Although I have never found it useful, certain Microsoft OS's used to cause a nuisance of themselves by putting themselves on that range for no good reason.

I run several /24's from 10.0.0.0/8 and also IPv6 for my LAN and a /24 from 172.16.0.0/12 for the guest wifi, which is IPV4 only.

Main reasons are that new kit comes in with a default IP address in 192.168.0.0/16 and it is less confusing to find them on the network and then put them in a different range, plus as you say 10.0.0.0/8 offers more memorable addresses. Only problem was that my former wireless ISP used 10.0.0.0/8 addresses for their CGNAT network, when they should have been using 100.64.0.0/12. I wasn't happy about that.

I have always gone for 172.6.x.x for my own personal networks. At times, I may have been working with various infrastructures and they were always on 169.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x and I this knoew whether I was on corporate or personal. It could be fun at times, with two or three PCs running simultaneously connected to infrastructure in UK, Singapore, Australia and N America.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

The default private LAN IP range seems to be 192.168.0.0 but 172.16.0.0 and 10.0.0.0 are also available. I can't imaging many people here have use for the 16 million private address 10.0.0.0 offers, but I wonder if anyone does use the 'other' ranges. And why?

Lots of (very large) corporate networks use the 10 range (old Class A); so that you can do things such as 10.<building>.<floor>.<device> type numbering and routing. Then you nat or proxy those connections that need to go externally through the firewall.

I'm kinda attracted to the 10.0.0.0 range. I think 10.11.12.13 might be an easier address to remember than 192.168.99.87. Not interested in IPv6 addresses internally. They're not human usable as far as I'm concerned.

We all should be moving away from thinking of devices by IP and thinking by name, and letting the network convert name to IP, then IPv4 or IPv6 doesn't matter.

Back in the 1980s most companies running PC networks (those not using terminals) were typically on Novell's Netware using the IPX/SPX and there was no such thing as an IP address. Or really small networks using Windows for Workgroups were on the Microsoft NetBEUI / IBM's OS/2 NetBIOS and these are self-configuring, there is no 'address'.

Firewall and manage your LAN properly and v4 and v6 will interoperate without issue.

IPv4 "local addressing" ranges are in RFC 1918
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918

Edited by jchamier (Sat 06-Apr-24 18:12:55)

In reply to a post by MHC:

I have always gone for 172.6.x.x for my own personal networks. At times, I may have been working with various infrastructures and they were always on 169.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x and I this knoew whether I was on corporate or personal. It could be fun at times, with two or three PCs running simultaneously connected to infrastructure in UK, Singapore, Australia and N America.

Corporately we used to interopeate with thousands of customers, network's connected (and lots of firewall rules at each end!). A client that had 10.x.x.x had to be NAT'd to somewhere in our IP space, absolute pain in the ....

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Corporately we used to interopeate with thousands of customers, network's connected (and lots of firewall rules at each end!). A client that had 10.x.x.x had to be NAT'd to somewhere in our IP space, absolute pain in the ....

Is that not a problem of IPv4 rather than a problem of 10.0.0.0/8?

In reply to a post by DFScale:

Is that not a problem of IPv4 rather than a problem of 10.0.0.0/8?

Its a problem of our legacy business (now exited) that needed to connect (routed) between our network and our clients... some clients had their own Class A (e.g. US government) but the majority were on 10.... thankfully that is a legacy business model now. IPv6 internally even 15 years ago was unheard of.

I use 10.0.0.0, with the second octet changing per site. So one site has a 10.100.0.0/16, next up has a 10.101.0.0/16 etc.

At home I select subnets of 192.168.0.0/16 (/24 by default)
but for small business work I use 172.x (16 ≤ x ≤ 31) and the subnets are sized according to use case (/22 by default).

I routinely avoid the more common subnets (0,1 and 16,31 respectively).

For a large enterprise we used various sized subnets of 10.0.0.0/8 so it's not particularly useful to choose these for home if ever do remote working (be it employee or contractor). That's to say it's not forbidden but just adds unnecessary gotchas in troubleshooting connectivity and opportunities for confusion for ICT service desk support.

Bottom line they are just addresses to administer
with v6 is it much easier to either use GUA delegated from ISP or ULA generated as per RFCs to minimise overlap.

Any host offering services within the LAN gets an entry in the private DNS of the LAN so that the network can resolve A and/or AAAA by a FQDN rather than needing memorable IPs.

192.168.1.0/24 for home. It's tradition.

I've never liked 172.16 for anything - usually leave that for things like Guest WiFi etc.

10. for work.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

192.168.1.0/24 for home. It's tradition.

I've never liked 172.16 for anything - usually leave that for things like Guest Wi-Fi etc.

10. for work.

I'm a 10.0.0.1/23 with 10.0.10.1/23 in intervals of .10. for each VLAN to keep it easy to spot and to allow a change of scope when required.

VPNs and that kind of stuff that run off VMs where DHCP is handled by the RAS is normally in the 10.10.0.1 etc range with each protocol going up by 10. just to keep it tidy.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by MHC:

I have always gone for 172.6.x.x for my own personal networks. At times, I may have been working with various infrastructures and they were always on 169.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x and I this knoew whether I was on corporate or personal. It could be fun at times, with two or three PCs running simultaneously connected to infrastructure in UK, Singapore, Australia and N America.

Corporately we used to interopeate with thousands of customers, network's connected (and lots of firewall rules at each end!). A client that had 10.x.x.x had to be NAT'd to somewhere in our IP space, absolute pain in the ....

IPv6 makes this problem go away

In reply to a post by behuk:

IPv6 makes this problem go away

As a service provider we wouldn’t necessarily have been able to dictate to our clients to use IPv6 though !

Certainly: https://ibb.co/ygN0nT4

I just use variation of 192.168.x.0/24 replacing the x with the year I was born, in fact I was using standard 192.168.0.0/24 forever until I ran my own VPN and found I couldnt reach my devices from a friends house who shared the same local subnet as me.....

In reply to a post by naylor2006:

I just use variation of 192.168.x.0/24 replacing the x with the year I was born, in fact I was using standard 192.168.0.0/24 forever until I ran my own VPN and found I couldnt reach my devices from a friends house who shared the same local subnet as me.....

Doesn't your username give us a clue to the value of x?

I thought he was possibly over 1800 years old ... teh X being anything from 001 to 255

Good think that he's not using IPv6

Lol, it wasnt an intention to obscure my year of birth and I was definitely not born in 2006

2006 is just a significant date to me which allowed me to use 'naylor' when all variations are taken :/...however I did have a good laugh at the speculation this morning.

192.168.84.0/24 is what I run.

Edited by naylor2006 (Wed 10-Apr-24 12:30:01)

So, 1940 years old then!

Yep, ive seen it all!

Not causing a nuisance. It’s the range used when a DHCP server is not available and the client is using dynamic addressing. It’s less efficient because the client has to check that the address isn’t in use, which could involve several queries.

Generally, if you get a link-local address it indicates something wrong with your network.

It doesn’t really matter as long as you run a DNS server. Which also makes IPv6 addresses just as useable.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Not causing a nuisance. It’s the range used when a DHCP server is not available and the client is using dynamic addressing. It’s less efficient because the client has to check that the address isn’t in use, which could involve several queries.

Generally, if you get a link-local address it indicates something wrong with your network.

LOL, this was probably 20 years ago and I forget the exact circumstances. Probably hybrid 16 and 32 bit Windows. I think the issue was that I was trying to run NetBIOS over TCPIP networking with OS/2 and the wretched Windows machines would revert to native NetBIOS and put themselves on Link-local TCPIP. To me, this passed the threshold for being a nuisance

Edited by DFScale (Wed 10-Apr-24 20:47:46)

OS/2 was always better at communications than Windows. Especially when it came to talking to big iron. But it could be a little tricky to configure.

I miss OS/2; it was rock solid and incorporated some novel ideas. But all things must pass.

For me, 192.168.0.0/23 (private LAN), 192.168.16.0/23 (restricted internet access)

There's a bit of practicality about this. I was using 192.168.1.0/24 for both DHCP and static reservations and was running out of addresses. I extended the subnet, shifted DHCP to 192.168.0.1-250, which gave me a whole load of extra spaces and then re-addressed all of the static stuff, most of it remaining where it was in 192.168.1.x, but gave it a new netmask. My gateway was always 192.168.1.254, so nothing broke while I did this. The restricted subnet has the same setup, with half DHCP and half static address reservations.

I wouldn't bother using 10.x.x.x (or 172.16.x.x - 172.31.x.x) personally - too much conflict with work stuff and if you use VPNs for remote access, this might cause you some issues down the road. Easier to avoid and for most people, there's no shortage of capacity in the 192.168.x.x, which tends to be rarely used in the corporate world.

Will shove in a new subnet for guests when I get around to upgrading my wifi to something that supports multiple SSIDs / VLANs, but I'm refusing to do this until I get my flippin' fibre installed (anywhere between now and the heat-death of the universe).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Corporately we used to interopeate with thousands of customers, network's connected (and lots of firewall rules at each end!). A client that had 10.x.x.x had to be NAT'd to somewhere in our IP space, absolute pain in the ....

Going back 25 years, my old company owned 3.0.0.0/8 and every PC globally had a 3.x.x.x address. Ironically, for security reasons they didn't even have this network publicly routable, so your connection to the internet was nat'ed through a more conventional address, which was utterly insane when you think of it.

At some point after I stopped working for them, they re-addressed their global network to 10.x.x.x and sold 3.0.0.0/8 for what I presume was a king's ransom!

edit: Just checked and they sold it to Amazon who presumably use it for AWS. King's ransom is probably a bit of an understatement there

Edited by daern (Mon 29-Apr-24 18:29:55)

In reply to a post by daern:

Going back 25 years, my old company owned 3.0.0.0/8 and every PC globally had a 3.x.x.x address. Ironically, for security reasons they didn't even have this network publicly routable, so your connection to the internet was nat'ed through a more conventional address, which was utterly insane when you think of it.

At some point after I stopped working for them, they re-addressed their global network to 10.x.x.x and sold 3.0.0.0/8 for what I presume was a king's ransom!

edit: Just checked and they sold it to Amazon who presumably use it for AWS. King's ransom is probably a bit of an understatement there

Ah GE! Amazon got a volume discount