Chord protocol - How should I go about mapping nodes to placeholders on the ring?
Take the last m bits of the hash.  View it as a number in binary.  That's how you convert the hashed value into a number.  The position is a number.  That should answer your questions 1 &amp; 3.

Now that you know how it works, you should be able to answer question 2 yourself.  If not, go back and read the original paper (especially Section IV.B), which should make this clear.