Learn Windows XP Professional: TCP/IP Addressing in Windows XP Professional (Page 3) Page 3

Subnet
Masks – Implementing subnewtorks (commonly referred to
as subnets in the field) helps to control network traffic.
Every node on the same physical Ethernet network sees all
the packets of data sent out on the network. This commonly has
the result of multiple collisions causing network
performance to be slow. Routers or gateways are used to
separate networks into subnets. Subnet masks on each of the
nodes allow the nodes on the same subnetwork to continue to
communicate with one another and with the routers or gateways
they use to send their messages.

Subnet masks allow you to identify the network ID and the
host (node) ID of an IP address.

Given the following example of a default B Class subnet
mask:

10011110.00010101.00111001.01101111 158.21.57.111
11111111.11111111.00000000.00000000 255.255.000.000
——————————————————–
10010110.11010111.00000000.00000000 158.21.000.000

we can determine that the network ID is 158.21 and the host
ID is 57.111

Network Address : 158.21.0.0

Subnet Address : 158.21.0.0
Subnet Mask : 255.255.0.0
Subnet bit mask : nnnnnnnn.nnnnnnnn.hhhhhhhh.hhhhhhhh
Subnet Bits : 16
Host Bits : 16
Possible Number of Subnets : 1
Hosts per Subnet : 65534

Additional bits can be added to the subnet mask for a given
class of addresses to subnet networks further.

Given the following example of a B Class address using an
additional bit subnet mask:

10011110.00010101.00111001.01101111 158.21.57.111
11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000 255.255.240.000 Subnet
Mask
——————————————————–
10010110.11010111.00010000.00000000 150.215.016.000 Network
address

Subnet Mask : 255.255.240.0
Subnet bit mask : nnnnnnnn.nnnnnnnn.nnnnhhhh.hhhhhhhh
Subnet Bits : 20
Host Bits : 12
Possible Number of Subnets : 16
Hosts per Subnet : 4094

we can see that rather than having the single subnet and
65534 Hosts per Subnet allowed under the default subnet mask,
we are able to have up to 16 subnets with up to 4094 Hosts
per Subnet by using a Subnet Mask of 255.255.240.000.

Selected Subnet : 158.21.0.0/255.255.240.0
Usable Addresses : 4094
Host range : 158.21.0.1 to 158.21.15.254
Broadcast : 158.21.15.255

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] –
A subnet address cannot be all 0’s or all 1’s.