How many remember without checking wikipedia, why are the numbers of ip address until 255, not more, why?

[strateguy632]

how many remember without checking wikipedia, why are the numbers of ip address until 255, not more, why?

[IslaTheWitch]

IP address is a 32-bit binary value split for 4 numbers, so every number is 8-bit. 2^8 = 256; if you include 0, you have a range of 0 - 255, binary basic...

[strateguy632]

wonderfully explained tnx!

[IslaTheWitch]

Glad I could help. Thanks for MHO

[Astarlessnightsky]

Binary code, 256 is 2^8, you got 8 bits that are either 0/1 this covers the decimal numbers 0-255 = 256 possible numbers.

[strateguy632]

yours was best even more than similar answers and the engineer equation too.

[Likes2drive]

No clue, I’m not good with computer science, only good with working on electrical problems and mechanical stuff

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

[0, 2^8=256) or [0,255]. IP addresses are 32-bit represented as four 8-bit integers.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Always wondered why they don't just use a hexadecimal for the string representation. Would save processing parsing the string.

Ex: "37.252.86.220" could just be "25FC56DC".

[IslaTheWitch]

because every part of the IP address has a meaning :D so we need to have immediate access without parsing it

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch It might just be my programmer bias but it seems easier for me for even humans to parse each 8-bit component with just two fixed-length hex characters rather than a variable-length decimal string components separated by a dot. Also easier to copy and paste if text editors that highlight text from double-clicking use the period as a token separator. I don't know; it seems more efficient to me for both humans and machine but again, might just be my programmer bias. 😅

[IslaTheWitch]

remember that systems see addresses as binary... converting from integer to binary is easier than from hexa.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch... but especially the machine efficiency is so compelling to me. If we assume all string reps of IP addresses use hexadecimal, then we can always assume a 32-bit IP address can be represented as a 64-bit (8 byte) string: `char ip_address[8]` in C. And that's radically more efficient when it comes to memory allocation, allowing such IP addresses to be allocated/deallocated on the stack, and collections of them to be allocated without any heap allocation for the individual strings.

[IslaTheWitch]

All systems work binary... You want to rewrite them? :D

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I'm only speaking about lexicographical string conversions for human consumption. The 32-bit IP address is still optimally repped as a 32-bit unsigned int: `uint32_t ip_address;` so to speak, in binary form. Strictly talking about text representations.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch Binary would be the worst though for the string rep! A string IP like "37.252.86.220" would have to be represented as "10010111111100101011011011100" (256-bit strings) which would be maximally inefficient. So decimal strings at least beat binary string in this case, but I think hexadecimal strings beat both.

[IslaTheWitch]

I'm so used to IP addresses as integers or binary that any other representation would confuse me immediately. Also, for me, integers are more readable when assigning slots in the local gropup/network, so...

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I see! It does let us visually distinguish each 8-bit component when separated by the dots. I might have a disconnect there as to what's most visually useful for people working in networking.

I come from extremely old school mindset starting on the 80286 and programming on the NES in 6502 where even kilobytes of memory were so precious. So I'm turning into a bit of a dinosaur these days wanting to still be so frugal with respect to memory use and processing.

[IslaTheWitch]

I started with assembler on Atari :D The memory also was precious :D but I try to align with current requirements. And nowadays, memory is not a problem, but the time of executing the code...

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch Awesome memories! In my area of work (which is probably the only one still suitable for me) on real-time computer graphics engines where every little optimization counts to maintain real-time FPS, DRAM is no longer precious but CPU cache is still so limited, like often only 64 kilobytes/core for L1, and we're usually bottlenecked by the time it takes to load memory from DRAM down through the memory hierarchy into CPU cache lines and ultimately registers. So micro-optimizations like minimizing memory use as well as paying careful attention to memory alignment, false sharing, hot/cold field splitting, etc, still tend to make a world of difference in performance. Yet I'd be thoroughly counter-productive if I was working on something that needs no such optimizations or sleeping next to our profilers.

[IslaTheWitch]

Damn... 64 kilo lol... who remembers it? But your work sounds interesting... I stuck with AI and high-level programming... I would still write in assembler, but no one wants to pay as much as for other shit...

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I sometimes wish I went more the high-level route. I got into coding mainly out of a desire to design and make video games as a kid. But I actually wasn't interested in the programming part that much; I just wanted to be able to make the types of video games I imagined. Yet the process of having to learn how to program such ancient hardware kind of pushed me in that direction towards become a low-level computer graphics programmer. Yet it's so snail-pace working at such a low-level and divorces me from a lot of the decisions that affect the user experience of our products beyond graphics and frame rates. I have a retirement dream once I'm in my 60s and hopefully have enough money saved up and a supplemental pension to return to indie gamedev and be able to design and program my own games again.

[IslaTheWitch]

I started to write code because I wanted to have better logic for the games, lol. I've never been really interested in graphics :D

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I've always been a bit visually drawn to graphics but mainly got into gamedev out of a lot of illustration. My first attempts at trying to design video games before I knew how to code looked like illustrated video game instruction manuals at the time, describing controls and how they worked, enemies, power-ups, things of this nature.



The recent developments of AI fascinate me a lot with natural language processing especially. One of the limitations I always found most in video games as a lover of role-playing games is the absence of the human dungeon master to improvise what happens in response to our choices while being given so much freedom of choice, like whether we want to sneak into a castle at night, scale the walls, follow a guard and knock him out and wear his clothes as a disguise, try to diplomatically talk our way through, fight our way through, etc. When we have to anticipate all the possibilities in advance for video games, it significantly restricts the options we can provide to the player and the level of deep acknowledgement of their past decisions.

AI seems like it could solve that, generating new content on the fly as a human dungeon master would in response to player choices.

[IslaTheWitch]

I work exactly in this field - language processing - language models :D

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch That's awesome! The possibilities for gaming really excite me a lot. I think a lot of modern role-playing games have actually grown worse in terms of acknowledging player choices and giving them a lot of freedom.

As a very basic example, most games these days use voice actors to record the dialogue. So that comes with the cost that they can no longer acknowledge players by a chosen name, like we can't get a voice actor to record the line, "Hail, IslaTheWitch!" They instead have to address the player in a generic way like, "Hail, traveler!"

That's a blatant example and I can come up with a lot more subtle ones but the cost of rising production values is often the inability to acknowledge player choices nearly as well. That could be solved, for example, if text-to-speech synthesis improves enough in quality that it can replace the need for voice actors. Throw NLP on top of that and we could start having completely spontaneous conversations with the NPCs in our world.

I get very excited thinking about it!

[IslaTheWitch]

there is an app character[.]ai - it's mainly for storytelling and only text for now, but you can see how much it evolved.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I was so impressed already trying out Chat-GPT that way. I'll have to check that out as well. Something that also fascinates me is music generation using machine learning, far beyond basic algorithmic composition, like Aiva:

https://youtu.be/Emidxpkyk6o

It currently requires some human intervention to create results that sound so good, but the tech seems really promising to me for gaming. This seems to have thrown a debate among professional composers who claim that AI can never beat the quality of human composers, and I'm not necessarily in disagreement. But something a human composer can never do is improvise endless music on the fly while a video game is running, with music perhaps catered very specifically to the environment, the mood, the most exact details of the precise situation the player is in. That would be humanly impossible and that's where I could see generating music on the fly to hold the most promise, even if it comes at some overall cost to quality.

[IslaTheWitch]

chatGPT is dry compared with this app. They add their own language models on the top of chatGPT lol

As a writer I play a lot with it :D

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

@IslaTheWitch I will definitely check it out! I often wish I could develop some writing skills of my own. It seems like the ultimate medium for storytelling. I'm much more visually-oriented and have my second major in VisArts besides CompSci, but I envy writers in how they can tell the most epic stories and describe things so vividly.

[exitseven]

Because an IP address is expressed in four 8 bit bytes and the maximum value that can fit in an 8 bit byte is 255.

[Avicenna]

0-255 is 2 to the 8th power

[Zestyassmf1997]

Not me.