Different computers use different conventions for ordering the bytes within multibyte integer values. Some computers put the most significant byte first (known as big-endian order) and others put the least-significant byte first (known as little-endian order). To work with computers that use different byte ordering, all integer values that are sent over the network are sent in network byte order which has the most significant byte first.

The IPAddress.HostToNetworkOrder(long) method converts multibyte integer values that are stored on the host system from the byte order used by the host to the byte order used by the network.

Namespace: System.Net
Assembly: System (in System.dll)
Assembly Versions: 1.0.5000.0, 2.0.0.0, 4.0.0.0