What Does Reserved Address Space Mean?
Reserved address space is the group of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are reserved and categorized only for use with internal networks or intranets. It is a component of the IP address scheme/classes reserved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Address and Naming Authority (IANA) for experimentation and internal use.
Techopedia Explains Reserved Address Space
Reserved address space is applicable to Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) IP addresses. IP addresses within the reserved address space are non-routable and not meant for general addressing. These include IP addresses that range from the top 3 IP classes, including Class a, b and c.
The reserved address space includes the following range of IP addresses in the IPv4 addressing scheme:
- 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 (prefix: 172.16/12)
- 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255 (prefix: 10/8)
- 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 (prefix: 192.168/16)