Reserved Address Space

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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)

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.