by Hovhannes Avoyan | Oct 03, 2009
The same designated IP address routing prefix assigned to any group of networked computers and devices are denoted with the term a subnetwork, or subnet. In a large network excessive rates of ethernet packet collision may occur which could be prevented by subnetting which wil break the network into smaller pieces called subnets. Hierarchical arrangement of the subnets can be done. It could be done with the network address space of the organization into a tree-like structure. To keep up the borders and to keep the traffic in control routers are used.
In a host identifier the portion of address is preceded by the IP address where there are sequence of leading bits which is a routing prefix. A subnet mask is a bit mask covering the number of bits in the prefix. The subnet mask is used to express the routing prefix in IPv4 networks. Subnet mask is usually represented as quad-dotted decimal representation in IPv4. The following example can be considered for a clear picture of the concept, the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 for the 192.168.1.0 network with a 24-bit routing prefix(192.168.1.0/24). Always in IPv4 networks the routing prefixes are expressed in standardized notation which includes the network address and the mask length like 2001:db8::/32.
Here is a simple subnet calculator:
Category: Articles | Tagged No Comments.