An IP address is either a 32-bit or 128-bit unsigned number used by IP, a lower-level protocol on which protocols like UDP and TCP are built. The IP address architecture is defined by RFC 790: Assigned Numbers, RFC 1918: Address Allocation for Private Internets, RFC 2365: Administratively Scoped IP Multicast, and RFC 2373: IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture. An instance of an InetAddress consists of an IP address and possibly its corresponding host name (depending on whether it is constructed with a host name or whether it has already done reverse host name resolution).
unicast An identifier for a single interface. A packet sent to a unicast address is delivered to the interface identified by that address. The Unspecified Address -- Also called anylocal or wildcard address. It must never be assigned to any node. It indicates the absence of an address. One example of its use is as the target of bind, which allows a server to accept a client connection on any interface, in case the server host has multiple interfaces.
The unspecified address must not be used as the destination address of an IP packet.
The Loopback Addresses -- This is the address assigned to the loopback interface. Anything sent to this IP address loops around and becomes IP input on the local host. This address is often used when testing a client.
multicast An identifier for a set of interfaces (typically belonging to different nodes). A packet sent to a multicast address is delivered to all interfaces identified by that address.
Link-local addresses are designed to be used for addressing on a single link for purposes such as auto-address configuration, neighbor discovery, or when no routers are present.
Site-local addresses are designed to be used for addressing inside of a site without the need for a global prefix.
Global addresses are unique across the internet.
For IPv4 address format, please refer to Inet4Address#format; For IPv6 address format, please refer to Inet6Address#format.
Reverse name resolution means that for any IP address, the host associated with the IP address is returned.
The InetAddress class provides methods to resolve host names to their IP addresses and vise versa.
By default, the result of positive host name resolutions are cached forever, because there is no general rule to decide when it is safe to remove cache entries. The result of unsuccessful host name resolution is cached for a very short period of time (10 seconds) to improve performance.
Under certain circumstances where it can be determined that DNS spoofing attacks are not possible, a Java security property can be set to a different Time-to-live (TTL) value for positive caching. Likewise, a system admin can configure a different negative caching TTL value when needed.
Two Java security properties control the TTL values used for positive and negative host name resolution caching:
- networkaddress.cache.ttl (default: -1)
- Indicates the caching policy for successful name lookups from the name service. The value is specified as as integer to indicate the number of seconds to cache the successful lookup.
A value of -1 indicates "cache forever".
- networkaddress.cache.negative.ttl (default: 10)
- Indicates the caching policy for un-successful name lookups from the name service. The value is specified as as integer to indicate the number of seconds to cache the failure for un-successful lookups.
A value of 0 indicates "never cache". A value of -1 indicates "cache forever".
true if and only if the argument is
not null and it represents the same IP address as
this object.
Two instances of InetAddress represent the same IP
address if the length of the byte arrays returned by
getAddress is the same for both, and each of the
array components is the same for the byte arrays.
InetAddress
object. The result is in network byte order: the highest order
byte of the address is in getAddress()[0]. The host name can either be a machine name, such as
"java.sun.com", or a textual representation of its IP
address. If a literal IP address is supplied, only the
validity of the address format is checked.
For host specified in literal IPv6 address,
either the form defined in RFC 2732 or the literal IPv6 address
format defined in RFC 2373 is accepted. A literal IPv6 address may
also be qualified by appending a scoped zone identifier or scope_id.
The syntax and usage of scope_ids is described
here.
If the host is null then an InetAddress representing an address of the loopback interface is returned. See RFC 3330 section 2 and RFC 2373 section 2.5.3.
If there is a security manager and host is not
null and host.length() is not equal to zero, the
security manager's
checkConnect method is called
with the hostname and -1
as its arguments to see if the operation is allowed.
InetAddress object given the raw IP address .
The argument is in network byte order: the highest order
byte of the address is in getAddress()[0].
This method doesn't block, i.e. no reverse name service lookup is performed.
IPv4 address byte array must be 4 bytes long and IPv6 byte array must be 16 bytes long
The host name can either be a machine name, such as
"java.sun.com", or a textual representation of its IP
address.
No validity checking is done on the host name either.
If addr specifies an IPv4 address an instance of Inet4Address will be returned; otherwise, an instance of Inet6Address will be returned.
IPv4 address byte array must be 4 bytes long and IPv6 byte array must be 16 bytes long
The host name can either be a machine name, such as
"java.sun.com", or a textual representation of its
IP address. If a literal IP address is supplied, only the
validity of the address format is checked.
For host specified in literal IPv6 address,
either the form defined in RFC 2732 or the literal IPv6 address
format defined in RFC 2373 is accepted. IPv6 scoped addresses are also
supported. See here for a description of IPv6
scoped addresses.
If the host is null then an InetAddress representing an address of the loopback interface is returned. See RFC 3330 section 2 and RFC 2373 section 2.5.3.
If there is a security manager, this method first
calls its checkConnect method
with the hostname and -1
as its arguments to see if the calling code is allowed to know
the hostname for this IP address, i.e., to connect to the host.
If the operation is not allowed, it will return
the textual representation of the IP address.
If this InetAddress was created with a host name, this host name will be remembered and returned; otherwise, a reverse name lookup will be performed and the result will be returned based on the system configured name lookup service. If a lookup of the name service is required, call getCanonicalHostName .
If there is a security manager, its
checkConnect method is first called
with the hostname and -1
as its arguments to see if the operation is allowed.
If the operation is not allowed, it will return
the textual representation of the IP address.
If there is a security manager, its
checkConnect method is called
with the local host name and -1
as its arguments to see if the operation is allowed.
If the operation is not allowed, an InetAddress representing
the loopback address is returned.
The timeout value, in milliseconds, indicates the maximum amount of time the try should take. If the operation times out before getting an answer, the host is deemed unreachable. A negative value will result in an IllegalArgumentException being thrown.
The network interface and ttl parameters
let the caller specify which network interface the test will go through
and the maximum number of hops the packets should go through.
A negative value for the ttl will result in an
IllegalArgumentException being thrown.
The timeout value, in milliseconds, indicates the maximum amount of time the try should take. If the operation times out before getting an answer, the host is deemed unreachable. A negative value will result in an IllegalArgumentException being thrown.
wait methods.
The awakened thread will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened thread will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened thread enjoys no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. A thread becomes the owner of the object's monitor in one of three ways:
synchronized statement
that synchronizes on the object.
Class, by executing a
synchronized static method of that class.
Only one thread at a time can own an object's monitor.
wait methods.
The awakened threads will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened threads will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened threads enjoy no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
String. The
string returned is of the form: hostname / literal IP
address.
If the host name is unresolved, no reverse name service loopup
is performed. The hostname part will be represented by an empty string.
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread
releases ownership of this monitor and waits until another thread
notifies threads waiting on this object's monitor to wake up
either through a call to the notify method or the
notifyAll method. The thread then waits until it can
re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait();
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.The current thread must own this object's monitor.
This method causes the current thread (call it T) to place itself in the wait set for this object and then to relinquish any and all synchronization claims on this object. Thread T becomes disabled for thread scheduling purposes and lies dormant until one of four things happens:
A thread can also wake up without being notified, interrupted, or timing out, a so-called spurious wakeup. While this will rarely occur in practice, applications must guard against it by testing for the condition that should have caused the thread to be awakened, and continuing to wait if the condition is not satisfied. In other words, waits should always occur in loops, like this one:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait(timeout);
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
(For more information on this topic, see Section 3.2.3 in Doug Lea's
"Concurrent Programming in Java (Second Edition)" (Addison-Wesley,
2000), or Item 50 in Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java Programming
Language Guide" (Addison-Wesley, 2001).
If the current thread is interrupted by another thread while it is waiting, then an InterruptedException is thrown. This exception is not thrown until the lock status of this object has been restored as described above.
Note that the wait method, as it places the current thread into the wait set for this object, unlocks only this object; any other objects on which the current thread may be synchronized remain locked while the thread waits.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
This method is similar to the wait method of one
argument, but it allows finer control over the amount of time to
wait for a notification before giving up. The amount of real time,
measured in nanoseconds, is given by:
1000000*timeout+nanos
In all other respects, this method does the same thing as the method of one argument. In particular, wait(0, 0) means the same thing as wait(0).
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread releases ownership of this monitor and waits until either of the following two conditions has occurred:
notify method
or the notifyAll method.
timeout
milliseconds plus nanos nanoseconds arguments, has
elapsed.
The thread then waits until it can re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait(timeout, nanos);
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.