Applicable Products
ZETA Cellular Modems
SENTRY Cellular Survey Loggers
SL500 Cellular Serial Gateways
QUARTZ Routers
Objective
This application note explains about the IP address, types of IP addresses, version of IP addresses, classes of IP addresses, subnet mask, Converting IP address into binary.
Solution
To avoid IP conflicts each device must be assigned a unique IP address.
IP address stands for an Internet Protocol address, it is a unique number that devices use to communicate with another device in a network.
There are four types of IP addresses.
1. Public IP address
2. Private IP address
3. Fixed/Static IP address
4. Dynamic IP address
Public IP address
A Public IP address is the IP address that is provided for your cellular modem/router etc. by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) for access to the Internet. A public IP address may change once a device is rebooted.
How to obtain Public IP addresses of Siretta products
Siretta Quartz Routers
There are many ways to obtain Public IP address of a Siretta Quartz router. One example is to go to https://whatismyipaddress.com/ when the router is connected to your PC.
From this example the public IP address is 62.232.200.42
SL500 and ZETA Modems
When a Siretta modem is connected to a server (example below shows a ZETA modem connected to Siretta Cloud Gateway Server) the IP address is displayed.
Private IP addresses
Private IP addresses are IP addresses used for internal communication within a Local Area Network (LAN). A private IP address cannot be used to access internet, as it is not visible outside the LAN.
For example, in Siretta Quartz routers the default private IP address is 192.168.1.1. This IP Address is for communication between router and a PC for configurations purposes and is not visible to the outside world.
How to obtain a Private IP addresses for Siretta product
Quartz router
When the Siretta router is connected to the internet it acquires a private IP address from the mobile service provider as seen below.
SL500 Serial Gateway
In SL500 Private IP address can be viewed on the device Management Portal when device becomes online on portal.
ZETA modem
The ZETA Private IP address can be viewed by issuing set of AT commands to the modem using Terminal Emulator program as seen below.
For SENTRY there is no way for user to identity what private IP address was used, knowing private IP address in SENTRY is unnecessary, as the device is communicating directly with the portal, once portal shows device is ONLINE, then device has obtained a private IP address from the mobile service provider.
Fixed/Static IP address
A fixed IP address is the type of IP address that stays fixed.
Fixed IP addresses can be either Public or Private and are used to remotely access Siretta cellular devices such as SL500, ZETA and QUARTZ, or access services behind them using the internet.
When connecting to the Internet, not all SIM cards from an ISP come with a Fixed IP address and must be specifically requested.
Dynamic IP address
Dynamic IP address is assigned by the router and changes when a device is rebooted. A Dynamic IP address does not allow the user to remotely access a cellular device. However, Intrenet access is possible, as the ISP can recognise the range of Dynamic IP addresses available to the router.
IP address versions
There are two Versions of IP addresses.
1. Internet Protocol Version 4 – IPv4
2. Internet Protocol Version 6 – IPv6
Internet Protocol Version 4 – IPv4
Internet Protocol Version 4 is 32 bit long, it contains four octets separated by dots, and is used for internet communication
Example of IPV4 is: 192.168.1.1.
1. The first octet is “192.”
2. The second octet is “168.”
3. Third octet is “1.”
4. Fourth octet is “1”
Internet Protocol Version 6 – IPv6
Internet Protocol Version 6 is the type of IP address, which is 128 bit long, it uses combination of numbers and letters to identify the device in a IPV6 network.
Example of IPV6 is: fe80::9428:944b:610a:c2b%28.
There are four Classes of IP addresses.
1. Class A
2. Class B
3. Class C
4. Class D
The table below shows a Summary of IP Classes and their IP range.
| Class A | Class B | Class C | Class D | Class E | |
| Address Range | 1-127 | 128 – 191 | 192 – 223 | 224 – 247 | 248 – 255 |
| Subnet Mask | 255.0.0.0 | 255.255.0.0 | 255.255.255.0 |
Subnet Mask
Subnet stands for sub networking, subnet mask is the process of separating IP address into two portions, a network portion and host portion.
Subnetting is the process of diving a large single network into groups of sub networks.
Demonstration of Solution
Table below summarise sim card requirements for each application.
Note: Siretta products does not support IPv6 currently.
Note: When you order a SIM card from a mobile service provider remember to request a technology such as CAT-M (LTE-M), CAT NB-IOT, GSM (2G), UMTS (3G), LTE (4G) or 5G (NR) which are supported by your Siretta device and IP address requirements depending on application per table above.
Converting IP address into binary
IP addresses covered in this document are in a decimal format. For machine-to-machine
communication binary format is needed. There are various online tools such as https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/decimal-to-binary.html which can be used to convert decimal to binary if required for your application.
Additional Reading
| Description | Author |
| Assignment of IP address https://www.iana.org/ | IANA |
| Dynamic IP address https://www.siretta.com/2019/04/setting-dynamic-dns-ddns-on-a-siretta-router/ | Siretta |
| Remote Access https://pages.siretta.com/port-forwarding-using-a-siretta-router-application-note/ | Siretta |
| https://www.siretta.com/2019/03/configuring-ip-passthrough-with-siretta-routers/ | Siretta |
| https://www.siretta.com/2023/01/setting-incoming-and-outgoing-data-socket-connection-using-siretta-modem/ | Siretta |
