8 Steps to Understanding IP Subnetting

By Dale Janssen | Last updated: November 03, 2021

Source:  Flickr/goblinbox
Introduction
Understanding IP subnetting is a fundamental requirement for almost any
techie - whether you’re a coder, a database administrator or the CTO.
However, as simple as the concepts are, there is a general difficulty in
understanding the topic.
Here we’ll break this topic into eight simple steps and help you put the
pieces together to fully understand IP subnetting.

These steps will give you the basic information needed in order to configure
routers or understand how IP addresses are broken down and how
subnetting works. You'll also learn how to plan a basic home or small office
network.

A basic understanding of how binary and decimal numbers work is required.

In addition, these definitions and terms will get you started:

 IP Address: A logical numeric address that is assigned to every single

computer, printer, switch, router or any other device that is part of a
TCP/IP-based network
 Subnet: A separate and identifiable portion of an organization's
network, typically arranged on one floor, building or geographical
location
 Subnet Mask: A 32-bit number used to differentiate the network
component of an IP address by dividing the IP address into a network
address and host address
 Network Interface Card (NIC): A computer hardware component that
allows a computer to connect to a network

Step 1 - Why We Need Subnets

To understand why we need subnets (short for subnetwork), let’s start right
from the beginning and recognize that we need to talk to "things" on
networks. Users need to talk to printers, email programs need to talk to
servers, and each of these "things" needs to have some sort of address. This
is no different from a house address, but with one minor exception: the
addresses need to be in numerical form. It is not possible to have a device
on a network that has alphabetical characters in its address like "23rd
Street." Its name can be alphanumeric - and we could translate that name
to a numeric address - but the address itself must be numbers alone.

These numbers are called IP addresses, and they have the important
function of figuring out not only the address of "things," but how
communication can occur between them. It is not enough to just have an
address. It is necessary to figure out how a message can be sent from one
address to another.

This is where a little organization comes into play.

It is often necessary to group things on a network together for both

organizational and efficiency’s sake. For example, let’s say you have a group
of printers in your company’s marketing department and a different bunch in
the sales offices. You want to limit the printers that each user sees to those
of each department. You could accomplish this by organizing the addresses
of these printers into unique subnets.

A subnet then, is a logical organization of connected network devices.

Each device on each subnet has an address that logically associates it with
the others on the same subnet. This also prevents devices on one subnet
from getting confused with hosts on the other subnet.

In terms of IP addressing and subnets, these devices are referred to as

hosts. So, in our example, there is a network (the company), which is
divided into logical subnets (marketing and sales departments), each of
which has its own hosts (users and printers).

Step 2 - Understanding Binary Numbers

Just the sound of "binary numbers" sends pangs of fear through many
people with different shades of arithmophobia (the irrational fear of numbers
and arithmetic). Have no fear - or at least put your fear to rest. Binary
numbers are just a different way to count. That is all. The concept is as easy
as one plus one.

Appreciate that we use the decimal numbering system in our everyday lives,

where our numbers are based on 10s of things - probably because we have
10 toes and 10 fingers. All the decimal system has are symbols that
represent quantities. We call the straight vertical line a "1" and the round
circle a "0".

That does not change with binary numbering systems.

With the decimal system, we can represent larger and larger numbers by
tacking numbers together. So, there are single-digit numbers, like 1, double-
digit numbers, like 12, triple-digit numbers, like 105, and so on and so on.
As numbers get larger, each digit represents a progressively greater value.
There is a 1's place, a 10’s place, a 100’s place and so on.

With this number, we have a 5 in the 1’s place, a 0 in the 10’s place and a 1
in the 100’s place. Hence,

1 x 100 + 0 x 10 + 5 x 1 = 105
Binary numbering systems are based on the same concept except that
because the binary system only has two numbers, 0 and 1, it takes a lot
more groupings to represent the same number. For example, the binary
equivalent of 105 is 01101001 (actually, it would be usually written as
1101001 because just like in the decimal numbering system, leading zeros
are dropped. However, we’ll keep that first zero in place in order to explain
the next concept).

Once again, as binary numbers get larger, each digit represents a

progressively greater value, but now the binary system has a 1’s place, a 2’s
place, a 4’s place, 8’s place, a 16’s place, a 32’s place and so on.
Hence,

0 x 128 + 1 x 64 + 1 x 32 + 0 x 16 + 1 x 8 + 0 x 4 + 0 x 2 + 1 x 1

equals:

0 + 64 + 32 + 0 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 1 = 105

Step 3 - IP Addresses
The "IP" in IP addresses refers to the Internet Protocol, where protocol is
loosely defined as "rules of communication". Imagine using a two-way radio
in a police car. Your conversations would probably end with "over" to
indicate you are finishing a particular part of the conversation. You might
also say "over and out" when you are finished the conversation itself. These
are nothing more than the rules of talking over a two-way radio - or the
protocol.

So, IP addressing must be understood as part of the rules for conversations

over the Internet. But it has grown so popular that it is also used on most
any network connected to the Internet, making it safe to say IP addressing
is relevant for most networks as well as the Internet.

So what is an IP address? Technically, it is the means whereby an entity on

a network can be addressed. It is made up solely of numbers, and these
numbers are conventionally written in the particular form of
XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, which is referred to as dotted decimal format.

Any one of the numbers between the dots can be between 0 and 255, so
example IP addresses include:

 205.112.45.60
 34.243.44.155

These numbers can also be written in binary form by taking each of the
decimal values separated by dots and converting to binary. So a number like
205.112.45.60 could be written as:

11001101.01110000.00101101.00111100

Each of these binary components is referred to as an octet, but this term is

not often used in subnetting practice. It does seem to come up in classrooms
and books, so know what it is (and then forget about it).
Why is each number limited to 0 to 255? Well, IP addresses are limited to 32
bits in length and the maximum number of combinations of binary numbers
you could have in an octet is 256 (mathematically calculated as 28). Hence,
the largest IP address you could have would be 255.255.255.255, given that
any one octet could be from 0 to 255.

There is one more aspect of an IP address that is important to understand -

the concept of a class.

Each IP address belongs to a class of IP addresses depending on the number

in the first octet. These classes are:

Notice that the number 127 is not included. That’s because it is used in a
special, self reflecting number called a loopback address. Think of this as an
address that says, “this is my address.” Note that only the first three classes
- A, B and C - are used by network administrators. These are the commonly
used classes. The other two, D and E, are reserved.

You define the class of an IP address by looking at its first octet value, but
the structure of an IP address for any one class is different. Each IP address
has a network address and a host address. The network part of the address
is the common address for any one network, while the host address part is
for each individual device on that network. So, if your phone number is 711-
612-1234, the area code (711) would be the common, or network,
component of the telephone system, while your individual phone number of
(612-1234) would be your host address.

The network and host components of class IP addresses are:

The technical numbers behind class addressing are as follows:

Step 4 - Subnetting and the Subnet Mask
To subnet a network is to create logical divisions of the network. Subnetting,
therefore, involves dividing the network into smaller portions called subnets.
Subnetting applies to IP addresses because this is done by borrowing bits
from the host portion of the IP address. In a sense, the IP address then has
three components - the network part, the subnet part and, finally, the host
part.

We create a subnet by logically grabbing the last bit from the network

component of the address and using it to determine the number of subnets
required. In the following example, a Class C address normally has 24 bits
for the network address and eight for the host, but we are going to borrow
the left-most bit of the host address and declare it as identifying the subnet.

If the bit is a 0, then that will be one subnet; if the bit is a 1, that would be
the second subnet. Of course, with only one borrowed bit we can only have
two possible subnets. By the same token, that also reduces the number of
hosts we can have on the network to 127 (but actually 125 useable
addresses given all zeros and all ones are not recommended addresses),
down from 255.

So how can you tell how many bits should be borrowed, or, in other words,
how many subnets we want to have on our network?

The answer is with a subnet mask.

Subnet masks sound a lot scarier than they really are. All that a subnet
mask does is indicate how many bits are being “borrowed” from the host
component of an IP address. If you can’t remember anything about
subnetting, remember this concept. It is the foundation of all subnetting.
The reason a subnet mask has this name is that it literally masks out the
host bits being borrowed from the host address portion of the IP address.

In the following diagram, there is a subnet mask for a Class C address. The
subnet mask is 255.255.255.128 which, when translated into bits, indicates
which bits of the host part of the address will be used to determine the
subnet number.

Of course, more bits borrowed means fewer individually addressable hosts

that can be on the network. Sometimes, all the combinations and
permutations can be confusing, so here are some tables of subnet
possibilities.

Note that this combination of IP addresses and subnet masks in the charts
are written as two separate values, such as Network Address =
205.112.45.60, Mask = 255.255.255.128, or as an IP address with the
number of bits indicated as being used for the mask, like 205.112.45.60/25.

Subnet masks work because of the magic of Boolean logic. To best

understand how a subnet mask actually does its thing, you must remember
that a subnet mask is only relevant when getting to a subnet. In other
words, determining what subnet an IP address lives on is the only reason for
a subnet mask. It’s devices like routers and switches that make use of
subnet masks.

Step 5 - Public Vs. Private IP Addresses

Technically, if all the possible combinations of IP addresses were available,
there would be about 4,228,250,625IP addresses for use. This would have to
include all public uses and private uses - which would then mean, by
definition, there would be nothing but public IP addresses.

However, not all addresses are available. Some are used for special
purposes. For example, any IP address ending in 255 is a special broadcast
address.

Other addresses are used for special signaling, including:

 Loopback (127.0.0.1) when a host is referring to itself

 Multicast routing mechanisms
 Limited broadcasts sent to every host, but limited to the local subnet
 Directed broadcasts first routed to a specific subnet, and then
broadcast to all hosts on that subnet

The concept of a private address is similar to that of a private extension in

an office phone system. Someone who wants to call an individual in a
company would dial the company’s public phone number, through which all
employees can be reached. Once connected, the caller would enter in the
extension number of the person to whom they wished to speak. Private IP
addresses are to IP addresses what extension numbers are to phone
systems.

Private IP addresses allow network administrators to extend the size of their

networks. A network could have one public IP address that all traffic on the
Internet sees, and hundreds - or even thousands - of hosts with private IP
addresses on the company subnet.

Anyone can use a private IP address on the understanding that all traffic
using these addresses must remain local. It would not be possible, for
example, to have an email message associated with a private IP address to
move across the Internet, but it is quite reasonable to have the same private
IP address work well in the company network.

The private IP addresses that you can assign for a private network can be
from the following three blocks of the IP address space:

 10.0.0.1 to 10.255.255.255: Provides a single Class A network of

addresses
 172.16.0.1 to 172.31.255.254: Provides 16 contiguous Class B
network addresses
 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.255.254: Provides up to 216 Class C network
addresses

A typical network setup using public and private IP addresses with a subnet
mask would look like:

Step 6 - CIDR IP Addressing

Having spent a whole bunch of time learning about IP addresses and classes,
you might be surprised that in reality they are not used anymore other than
to understand the basic concepts of IP addressing.

Instead, network administrators use Classless Internet Domain

Routing (CIDR), pronounced "cider", to represent IP addresses. The idea
behind CIDR is to adapt the concept of subnetting to the entire Internet. In
short, classless addressing means that instead of breaking a particular
network into subnets, we can aggregate networks into larger supernets.

CIDR is therefore often referred to as supernetting, where the principles of

subnetting are applied to larger networks. CIDR is written out in a
network/mask format, where the mask is tacked onto the network address
in the form of the number of bits used in the mask. An example would be
205.112.45.60/25. What is most important to understand about the CIDR
method of subnetting is the use the network prefix (the /25 of
205.112.45.60/25), rather than the classful way of using the first three bits
of the IP address to determine the dividing point between the network
number and the host number.

The process for understanding what this means is:

1. The “205” in the first octet means this IP address would normally
contain 24 bits to represent the network portion of the address. With
eight bits to an octet, the arithmetic is 3 x 8 = 24, or looking at it the
other way around, “/24” means no bits are being borrowed from the
last octet.
2. But this is “/25,” which indicates it is “borrowing” one bit from the host
portion of the address.
3. With only one bit, there can only be two unique subnets.
4. So this is the equivalent of a net mask of 255.255.255.128, where
there is a maximum of 126 host addresses addressable on each of the
two subnets.

So why did CIDR become so popular? Because it’s a much more efficient
allocator of the IP address space. Using CIDR, a network admin can carve
out a number of host addresses that’s closer to what is required than with
the class approach.

For example, say a network admin has an IP address of 207.0.64.0/18 to

work with. This block consists of 16,384 IP addresses. But if only 900 host
addresses are required, this wastes scarce resources, leaving 15,484
(16,384 – 900) addresses unused. By using a subnet CIDR of 207.0.68.0/22
though, the network would address 1,024 nodes, which is much closer to the
900 host addresses required.
Step 7 - Variable Length Subnet Masking
When an IP network is assigned more than one subnet mask, it is said to a
have a variable length subnet mask (VLSM). This is what is required when
you are subnetting a subnet. The concept is very straightforward: Any one
subnet can be broken down into further subnets by indicating the proper
VLSM.

What must be appreciated about VLSM is how RIP 1 routers work. Originally,
the IP addressing scheme and RIP 1 routing protocol did not take into
consideration the ability to have different subnet masks on the same
network. When a RIP 1 router receives a packet destined for a subnet, it has
no idea of the VLSM that has been used to generate the packet address. It
just has an address to work with without any knowledge of what CIDR prefix
was originally applied - and therefore no knowledge of how many bits are
used for the network address and how many are for the host address.

A RIP 1 router would handle this by making some assumptions. If the router
has a subnet of the same network number assigned as the local interface,
then it assumes the incoming packet has the same subnet mask as the local
interface, otherwise it assumes there is no subnet involved and applies a
classful mask.

The relevance of this is that RIP1 only allows a single subnet mask, making
it impossible to get the full benefit of VLSM. You must use a newer routing
protocol like Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or RIP2, where the network
prefix length or mask value is sent along with route advertisements from
router to router. With these in use, it is possible to use VLSM to its full
potential and have more than one subnet or sub-subnets.

Step 8 - IPv6 to the Rescue

Obviously, the 32-bit IP address has a limited number of addresses and the
explosion of interconnectivity has proved that there are just not
enough IPv4 addresses to go around. The answer to future growth lies in
the IPv6 addressing scheme. This is more than just the big brother to IPv4
in that it not only adds a significant number of addresses to the IP
addressing scheme but eliminates the need for CIDR and the network mask
as used in IPv4.

IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 128 bits. A 128-bit
number supports 2128 values, or
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible IP
addresses. This number is so big there is not even a name for it.

Even the text representation of IPv6 is different from that of IPv4, although
it does have a similar-looking dotted decimal look. You will see an IPv6
address written one of three ways:

 Preferred
 Compressed
 Mixed

Preferred IPv6 Addressing Notation

The preferred form is written using hexadecimal values to refer to the 128-
bit numbers in each address segment separated by a colon. It would be
written like X:X:X:X:X:X:X:X, where each X consists of four 16-bit values.
An example would be:

2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7D34

Each of the eight sections of an IPv6 number separated by the colons is

written as a hexadecimal number which, when translated to decimal value,
would range between 0 and 65,535. So where IPv4 text representations of
addresses use decimal numbers, IPv6 uses hexadecimal. It really does not
matter though - both boil down to binary numbers, which we covered in
detail in Section 2.
The following illustration shows how the text representation of an IPv6
address written in hexadecimal is translated into decimal and binary values.

Compressed IPv6 Addressing Notation

The compressed form simply substitutes zero strings with double colons to
indicate the zeros are "compressed". For example, the above address in
compressed notation would become:

2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7D34

There are some rules to follow when doing this zero substitution. First, a
substitution can only be done on one "section," or a full 16-bit group;
second, the double colon can only be used one time in any given address.
There is one other slightly confusing consideration: a double colon
automatically suppresses neighboring leading or trailing zeros in an address.
Therefore, the above address only indicates one set of double colons as a
compressed IPv6 address even though there are two sets of zeros.

Mixed IPv6 Addressing

The mixed addressing notation is useful in environments using both IPv4 and
IPv6 addresses. A mixed address would look like X:X:X:X:X:X:X:X:D:D:D:D,
where "X" represents the hexadecimal values of the six highest-order 16-bit
components of an IPv6 address, and"D" represents an IPv4 value that would
plug into the four lower-order values of an IPv6 address.

IPv6 Routing and Prefix Notation

IPv6 does not use subnet masks but does have a means of indicating
subnets that is similar to CIDR. IPv6 routing is based on a prefix length as
well where the prefix length represents the bits that have fixed values or are
the bits of the network identifier. For example,
2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7D34/64 indicates the first 64 bits of the
address are the network prefix. Prefix notation can also be used to indicate a
subnet identifier or a larger network