
INTRODUCTION
============

A pure Python network address representation and manipulation library.

netaddr provides a Pythonic way of working with :-

- IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and subnets (including CIDR notation)
- MAC (Media Access Control) addresses in multiple presentation formats
- IEEE EUI-64, OUI and IAB identifiers
- a user friendly IP glob-style format

Included are routines for :-

- generating, sorting and summarizing IP addresses
- converting IP addresses and ranges between various different formats
- performing set based operations on groups of IP addresses and subnets
- arbitrary IP address range calculations and conversions
- querying IEEE OUI and IAB organisational information
- querying of IP standards related data from key IANA data sources

For examples please visit the example wiki pages :-

    http://code.google.com/p/netaddr/wiki/NetAddrExamples

Complete API documentation for the latest release is available online :-

    http://packages.python.org/netaddr/

LICENSE
-------

This software is released under the liberal BSD license.

See the LICENSE file for full text and copyright notice.


DEPENDENCIES
------------

Requires Python 2.4 or higher.

Python 3.x is not currently supported but is planned for future releases.


INSTALLATION
------------

See the INSTALL file for details.


DOCUMENTATION
-------------

You can access various levels of documentation to suit your needs :-

- API documentation

The API is fully documented and is automatically generated for each release
using epydoc - http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/. 

It can be found in the docs/api/ directory where you extracted the source 
tarball/zip file or checked out the code. Open the index.html file with 
the HTML browser of your choice.

- Python docstrings

The docstrings contain a lot of detail. See these if you require information
on specific aspects of netaddr's API via an interactive Python interpreter
session or your favourite text editor.

- online wiki

A set of basic HOWTO code samples are available on the code hosting site's
wiki at the following URL :-

    http://code.google.com/p/netaddr/w/list


CHANGE HISTORY
--------------

Please see the CHANGELOG for details.


UNIT TESTS
----------

No code can ever be deemed truly complete or trustworthy without reasonable
unit test coverage. Full coverage for netaddr is the certainly the ultimate
goal. To this end coverage.py by Ned Batchelder is being used from release
0.7.x onwards to help with this. The latest coverage report can be found in
the tests/ subdirectory. Feel free to add tests to help improve coverage ;-)

Wherever possible all changes and new features will be covered with specific
regression tests.

To run the unit tests, go into the netaddr directory and run the following
using your Python interpreter :-

    python tests/__init__.py

Or if you are partial to setuptools :-

    python setup_egg.py test

Tests are expected to run through without error. If any do fail, *please* help
the project's user base by filing bug reports at the following URL :-
    
    http://code.google.com/p/netaddr/issues/list

*IMPORTANT*

Efforts have been made to ensure this code works equally well on both big and 
little endian architectures. However, the project does not own or have access
to any big endian hardware (e.g. SPARC or PowerPC) for continual regression 
testing. If you happen to work on big endian architectures with Python and wish
to use netaddr *PLEASE* ensure you run the unit tests before you using it in a 
production setting just to make sure everything is functioning as expected.


REFERENCES
----------

The following lists the main external references that have not only guided the 
implementation of netaddr's features and capabilities but also provide data
that is exposed via its API.

IPv4 RFCs

    RFC 791 - Internet Protocol
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791

    RFC 1918 - Address Allocation for Private Internets
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1918

    RFC 3330 - Special-Use IPv4 Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3330

    RFC 3927 - Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3927

Multicast (IPv4) RFCs

    RFC 2365 - Administratively Scoped IP Multicast
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2365

    RFC 3171 - IANA IPv4 Multicast Guidelines
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3171

    RFC 3927 - Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3927

IPv6 RFCs

    RFC 3330 - Special-Use IPv4 Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3330

    RFC 4291 - IPv6 Addressing Architecture
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4291

    RFC 3306 - Unicast-Prefix-based IPv6 Multicast
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3306

    RFC 3956 - The RP Address in IPv6 Multicast Address
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3956

    RFC 3879 - Deprecating Site Local Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3879

    RFC 4193 - Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4193

    RFC 4941 - Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4941

    RFC 1924 - A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1924

CIDR RFCs

    RFC 1338 - Supernetting: an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1338

    RFC 4632 - Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR): The Internet Address 
               Assignment and Aggregation Plan
        http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4632

IANA online resources

    IANA Protocol Registry
        http://www.iana.org/protocols/

    IPv4 Address Space
        http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

    IPv6 Address Space
        http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space

    Multicast Registrations
        http://www.iana.org/assignments/multicast-addresses

IEEE online resources

    IEEE Organisation Registry
        http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml

    OUI (Organisationally Unique Identifier) Registrations
        http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt

    IAB (Individual Address Block) Registrations
        http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/iab.txt


AUTHORS
-------

See the AUTHORS file for details.


THANKS
------

See the THANKS file for details.

Share and enjoy!
