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Appendix B IP Addresses and Subnetting
ES-1124 User’s Guide
33
Subnet masks are expressed in dotted decimal notation just like IP addresses. The following
examples show the binary and decimal notation for 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit and 29-bit subnet
masks.
Network Size
The size of the network number determines the maximum number of possible hosts you can
have on your network. The larger the number of network number bits, the smaller the number
of remaining host ID bits.
An IP address with host IDs of all zeros is the IP address of the network (192.168.1.0 with a
24-bit subnet mask, for example). An IP address with host IDs of all ones is the broadcast
address for that network (192.168.1.255 with a 24-bit subnet mask, for example).
As these two IP addresses cannot be used for individual hosts, calculate the maximum number
of possible hosts in a network as follows:
Notation
Since the mask is always a continuous number of ones beginning from the left, followed by a
continuous number of zeros for the remainder of the 32 bit mask, you can simply specify the
number of ones instead of writing the value of each octet. This is usually specified by writing
a “/” followed by the number of bits in the mask after the address.
For example, 192.1.1.0 /25 is equivalent to saying 192.1.1.0 with subnet mask
255.255.255.128.
The following table shows some possible subnet masks using both notations.
Table 6 Subnet Masks
BINARY
DECIMAL
1ST
OCTET
2ND
OCTET
3RD
OCTET
4TH OCTET
8-bit mask 11111111 00000000 00000000 00000000 255.0.0.0
16-bit mask 11111111 11111111 00000000 00000000 255.255.0.0
24-bit mask 11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000 255.255.255.0
29-bit mask 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111000 255.255.255.248
Table 7 Maximum Host Numbers
SUBNET MASK HOST ID SIZE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF HOSTS
8 bits 255.0.0.0 24 bits
2
24
– 2
16777214
16 bits 255.255.0.0 16 bits
2
16
– 2 65534
24 bits 255.255.255.0 8 bits
2
8
– 2
254
29 bits 255.255.255.248 3 bits
2
3
– 2
6
Table 8 Alternative Subnet Mask Notation
SUBNET MASK
ALTERNATIVE
NOTATION
LAST OCTET
(BINARY)
LAST OCTET
(DECIMAL)
255.255.255.0 /24 0000 0000 0
255.255.255.128 /25 1000 0000 128