Usage: `Data_Update`

On first run, enter your MaxMind license key when prompted. This will update all relevant files from MaxMind, Tor, Snort, and AlienVault

Usage: `IP_Search [options...] [input file] [output file]`

`-ipv4` | Only load IPv4 data

`-ipv6` | Only load IPv6 data

Usage: `Network_Calculator <ip address>[/<prefix length>]`

A common myth about IP addresses is that they were initially designed using the entirety of their address space as a single integer. So, for example, it is commonly thought that because an IPv4 address takes up 32 bits, then it should be therefore treated as an unsigned 32-bit integer, or as a single 32-bit number. And accordingly, it is also commonly thought that because an IPv6 address takes up 128 bits, then it should be therefore treated as an unsigned 128-bit integer. However, this was never actually the initial design of either IPv4 nor IPv6, and they were both initially designed as tuples containing exactly 2 separate and distinct unsigned integers. While today, the newer IPv6 tuple is yet unbroken and there is a clear division between a 64-bit network address and 64-bit host address, many people mistakenly try to apply concepts from the older IPv4 thinking that actually the mess that came to be of the 32-bit IPv4 address space due to a bundle of quick fixes to avoid IP exhaustion is somehow still relevant and that IPv6 just works in the same messy way but with a bigger address space.

This common misconception comes from the misunderstanding that IP addresses operate by simply assigning a single integer to each network device, and from there they can simply send each other messages, or packets, by addressing these packets to each other's single-integer addresses as if they were unique device IDs. However, if you liken this to a real-world example, it would be like addressing every building on earth a unique building ID and expecting to be able to just address mail to these building IDs without issue.

Now, how is all this related to IP addresses? IP addresses, since their conception, have always been divided between information for the routing between these autonomous systems, or "authorities", and information to identify the exact host within that authority. This allows those autonomous systems to manage their IP addresses themselves so they can organize much more efficiently, as opposed to waiting for a global system to organize the entirety of itself. Also, as we all know, every country, and maybe even some provinces and cities, have their own rules and regulations about accessing the Internet. Some areas impose censorship. Some areas distribute Internet access for free. Most people pay monthly to an ISP, Internet service provider, for this access and the ISP manages whether or not someone has access and what, exactly, they have access to, in accordance with their local policies.

So, hopefully, by this point you can see the importance of having two distinct pieces of information, the routing information as well as the host information. But, still, where did this misconception of having only one piece of information come from? When the Internet first came online, the first byte, 8 bits, of information were used as the routing information to identify the network, and the last 24 bits were used to identify the host. So, two very clear-cut unsigned integers, or numbers, the 8-bit routing information and the 24-bit host identification. As hard as it may be for modern Internet users to fathom, at the time having a simple limit of 254 networks globally (Not 256! As 2 addresses in every network were unusable as host addresses due to being set aside for the purposes of network ID and broadcast address) seemed totally acceptable since it was just a small group of nerdy institutions accessing it at the time.

What happened next is where things start getting messy. As more and more entities saw the importance of the Internet and wanted access to it, the nerdy governing body, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), had to quickly get together and solve the very obvious issue that having 254 total global authorities just was not going to cut it and this thing was going to become a lot more popular than they ever could have imagined.

While at the time the uppermost 2 bits were, as of yet, unused, the length of the leading bits designating class was, itself, variable, and the remainder of the bits in the uppermost byte, or uppermost 8 bits, being part of the network identification. The leading bits designating class could be anywhere from just the first bit alone as a 0, designating Class A, all the way up to the uppermost 4 bits all 1s, designating Class E. Now, while this broke the clear-cut tuple, it still confined most of the variable messiness to only the uppermost byte. Once the first byte was parsed and the class identified, the next three bytes, or 24 bits, could still be parsed rather quickly. If it was a Class A network with a leading 0 bit, only the next 7 bits were used to identify the network, and all of the remaining 3 bytes could be used by those respective networks to designate host. If it was a Class B network with leading bits of 1 and 0, respectively, then the remaining 6 bits of the first byte were concatenated to the second uppermost byte and used together to identify the network, while the remaining 2 bytes were used to identify the host. Following suit, Class C networks led with a binary series of 110, concatenating the remaining 5 bits of the first byte with the next 2 bytes, and using only the remaining 1 byte to designate host. Class D multicast addresses were then designated by a leading 1110, and a reserved space was given to addresses leading with 1111.

Even after tricks like NAT (1994) came about to conserve global IP space further by masking entire networks behind one or more global IP addresses, it was still clear a new IP version would need to come about to resolve all of these growing issues, which would require a bit more intention and design than just a hasty meeting to solve a current crisis and keep the system only just one more slight step away from failure.

Enter IPv6. In the midst of the dot-com bubble bursting in 1995, the same year the IETF got together to think about the future of IP. But instead of really coming up with anything super new, they really just went back to first principles of the initial concepts which governed IP those many years before it got messy, having a single tuple known as an IP address containing 2 clearly defined integers, one for routing and one to identify a host, which can each be efficiently parsed completely independently of each other without needing a bit mask or any other additional operations. The only difference this time would be a bigger space which defined the routing portion as the first 64 bits and defined the host portion as the last 64 bits. And although IPv6 was conceived before 64-bit processors became mainstream, having 2 integers which both natively fit perfectly snug on a 64-bit register was also a huge win for processor efficiency.