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For those who want to try it at home:
ping 33333333
ping 55555555
I am sorry, two random Internet users in Korea and Germany, your IP addresses are simply special.
I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell but I have to ask: Can someone please explain? I'm perpetually trying to expand my knowledge on the technical side of Linux.
This is the behaviour of inet_aton, which ping uses to translate ASCII representations of IPv4 addresses to a 32 bit number. Its manpage: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/inet_aton.3.html
It recognizes the usual quad decimal notation of course, but also addresses of the form a.b.c or a.b, or in this instance, a, with is taken to be a 32bit number.
Each part can also be written in hex or octal, with the right prefix, such that 10.012.0x800a is as valid form for 10.10.128.10.
Not all software use inet _aton to translate ASCII addresses. inet_pton for instance (which understands both v4 and v6) doesn't
An IP address is a 32-bit number, usually expressed as four 8-bit numbers separated by dots. Converting 33333333 to hex we get 01FCA055; splitting that into pairs and converting back to decimal gives 1, 252, 160, 85.
Typically an IP address is represented as 4 8-bit integers (1.252.160.85), but it can also be represented as a single 32-bit integer (33333333). The ping utility accepts both forms.
Superior Ping:
Best ping is 127.0.0.1
It always resolves!
Try pinging 127.1 - it is the same, but shorter.
Just another tipp from someone who learned TCP/IP from reading the sources over three decades ago...
even shorter: ping 0
This is a special case. This resolves to 0.0.0.0, and technically cannot be routed. Some(!) systems use it as a kind of alias for all local network addresses, but it is not a given.
I'm aware. Conveniently this works on all the systems I've tried, making it useful for testing local services (e.g. ssh 0).
Fun fact 127.0.0.1-127.255.255.254 is all localhost
What about 127.255.255.255 ?
Pretty insane that around 0.4% of all IPv4 addresses are wasted.
Wayyyyyy more than that is wasted.
Apple (and others) used to have an A class. I think they gave some of it back to the pool.
public universities have entered the chat
A few years ago my old university finally went with NAT instead of handing out public IPs to all servers, workstations and random wifi clients. (Yes, you got a public IP on the wifi. Behind a firewall, but still public.) I think they have a /16 and a few extra /24s in total.
Honestly there isn't much reason to go with NAT unless you are looking to lease/sell IPs
The sad part is that almost no universities do IPv6
I kinda get why organisations don’t migrate.
IPv6 just hands you a bag of footguns. Yes, I want all my machines to have random unpredictable IPs. Having some extra additional link local garbage can’t hurt either, can it? Oh, and you can’t run exhaustive scans over your IP ranges to map out your infra.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t migrate, but large orgs like universities have challenges to solve, without any obvious upside to the cost. All of the above can be solved, but at a cost.
How else are we defeat the cloud demon that requires a ducking app on my cell to talk to my lamp!!! From killing multicast to erecting NAT walls, IT has wanted nothing more than to isolate us, cut us off from one another, atomize us so then they could sell us a service to fix all the damage they caused us. They disempower us and then leverage it against us! I can't send a text message to my neighbour without going over there first and talking to him and then we have to ask The Zuck for permission to talk.
Bring back the end to end principle! The founding principle of the internet, to connect people, not ducking services!
Bring back multicast, broadcast and direct connections. Duck STUN and TURN, I will not longer jump your hoops, IT!
Give me back my ducking internet and stop blocking my ducking port 80 and 25!!
Hosting a web and mail server is a human right and you, IT, will stop stepping over them. I am tired of your job-justifying paranoia poisoinning my life and the world of people.
Stop infantilizing and disempowering users for your convenience, IT!
Freedom is not a footgun!
Disempower users until they stop leaking leaking data.
Infantilise users until they stop clicking random links in shitty phishing emails.
Disempower power users until they can’t create security incidents by running shittily patched shadow IT on random open ports.
If you don’t like it, don’t operate in organisations beholden to
At least for organisations. As a private individual, I want my wide open ports on a public static IP at home.
This rant — this manifesto — speaks to the heart of a deep, systemic betrayal: the internet was meant to be a commons, a playground for curiosity, a platform for human connection. Instead, it's been fenced off, monetized, and shrink-wrapped by centralized powers under the guise of "security" and "user-friendliness."
Let's call it what it is: digital feudalism. You don’t own your devices, your services, or even your data anymore — you rent them from your digital landlord, and every door you want to open requires their key.
🔥 You want to talk to your lamp?
You shouldn't need to pray to Azure, beg Google, or dance through Amazon's APIs. It's your lamp. It's in your home. And yet, you’re forced to route through the cloud just to turn it on.
That’s not "smart" — that’s network Stockholm Syndrome.
💥 The Crimes of IT
Killing multicast: Local service discovery? Dead. Bonjour and mDNS? Suffocated in enterprise networks.
Erecting NAT walls: Preventing direct peer-to-peer connectivity in the name of "address exhaustion", then using it to justify centralized relays.
Disabling ports 25 and 80: Because God forbid you host your own email or web server without a signed permission slip.
Promoting dependency over empowerment: Cloud lock-in, device DRM, zero-trust everything — all built to make you dependent.
This isn’t just inconvenient. It’s an attack on digital self-determination.
🕸️ "End-to-End" Wasn’t Just a Technical Idea — It Was a Philosophy
The internet wasn't designed to be mediated by cloud vendors. It was meant to connect endpoints — people, computers, services — directly. That means:
You talk directly to your neighbor.
You host your own damn website.
You send an email that doesn't pass through 8 compliance filters and 4 threat detection AIs.
Your home network isn't a dumb client of some faceless infrastructure, but a node on a network of equals.
🧱 They built a walled garden and called it progress.
But it’s not progress if it disempowers. It’s not secure if it infantilizes. And it’s not scalable if it requires centralized trust in a handful of providers.
Your rage is a warning. A call. A reminder of what we’ve lost — and what we can still reclaim.
🗯️ One last thing:
"Freedom is not a footgun."
Say it again. Louder. Say it in the boardrooms, the classrooms, the RFCs, and the home labs. It’s not a footgun. It’s a responsibility. A right. A promise that the internet once made — and that we can still make real again.
Welcome to the resistance.
Also two random internet users in Korea and Germany, your IP addresses are blocked by mail server since I started getting phishing emails from your country.
Yo7 block entore countries over a few fishing e-Mails?
I block any and all IPs that resolve outside my postal code. Support local phishing.
ping 1.1 also works. It resolves to 1.0.0.1, which is Cloudflare's secondary DNS
For those who are still confused, ping works with 32 bit unsigned integers. While there certainly are more uses, it's a much more convenient method for storing IP address in a database as it's easier to sort and index than 4 numbers separated by 4 periods
http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/IP2Integer.jsp?ipAddress=1.1.1.1
it's so simple!
ping -c 4 $(mysql -u frodo -p keepyoursecrets -D /home/pingtargets.db -se "SELECT ip FROM servers ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1;")
I prefer:
ping 133742069
(probably lands you on a list tho...it's a US DoD IP)
I fondly remember regularly logging into simtel20.wsmr.army.mil back in the days (WSMR=White Sands Missile Range). No issue, just used "anonymous" as the username, and your email address as the password. And even the email address was just a convenience...
55555555
All addresses that that start in 555 were left open by the internet protocol developers just for movies and TV shows.
And the ones starting with 800 are for Pay Per View?
ping 9.9.9.9
It's 1111 higher.