Subnetting

 2001 Ricky Moore

Why Subnet?
 Reduce network traffic

 Optimized network performance

 Simplified management
Implementing subnetting
 How many subnets?

 How many hosts per subnet?

 What are the valid subnet ID’s?

 What is the broadcast address?

 What are the ranges?

Subnetting
 Before you define a subnet mask, you
should take future expansion into
consideration.
 The more bits used for subnetting, the
more subnets are available but fewer
hosts are available per subnet.
Steps to subnetting
 Determine the number of subnets needed.
 Borrow bits from the host portion of the
subnet mask until you have the desired
number of subnets.
 Use the least significant bit for your
increment (or Delta) value to determine your
Subnet ID’s
 Subtract 1 from the next Subnet ID to identify
the broadcast ID for the current Subnet ID.
 Fill in the valid address ranges
Example

Let’s say we have a class C network address of

192.168.1.0. We need two subnets and at least 30 hosts
per subnet.
Example -Continued

When you receive a class C network address it has a

default subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. You cannot use
any of the network bits for subnetting. Which means
you must borrow bits from the host portion of the octet
for your subnets.
 Example -Continued
So our subnet mask is as follows;
255.255.255.0
Which in binary is;
11111111.11111111.11111111.0
We must borrow bits from the host portion of the address
until we reach our desired number of subnets.
 Example -Continued
So let’s go ahead and borrow a bit from the host portion
of the address
11111111.11111111.11111111.1
Now use the following formula to figure out the number of
subnets available.

2 to the power of the number of bits borrowed. In the

case of our example…
2¹ = 2-2=0
 Example -Continued
Now you may be wondering why we subtracted 2. You
can’t have all 0’s or 1’s in the host portion of the address.
So we must subtract 2 in our formula.
Borrowing 1 bit gave us 0 subnets. So what do we do?
Go back and borrow another
 Example -Continued
11111111.11111111.11111111.11
Now apply our formula again
2² = 4 – 2 = 2
By borrowing 2 bits we get our desired 2 subnets. Now
let’s take the remaining bits and find out how many hosts
we will have.
26 = 64 – 2 = 62
With the remaining 6 bits we get 62 hosts per subnet.
 Example -Continued
Now we must determine our Subnet ID’s.
To do this take the least-significant bit (or the bit most to
the right that is turned on and use that value for your first
subnet ID and then use that value as your increment for
the rest of you subnet ID’s.
11111111.11111111.11111111.11
In our case the least-significant bit’s value is 64
 Example -Continued
So in our example the Subnet ID’s are as follows;
64
128

Now we must figure out the broadcast address for each

subnet.
 Example -Continued
We said to figure out the broadcast address take the next
subnet ID and minus one so in our example it would be;
64
128
128 – 1 = 127
192 – 1 = 191
See next slide
 Example -Continued
So our Subnet ID’s and broadcast addresses would be as
follows;

Subnet ID Broadcast
64 127
128 191
 Example -Continued
Now all we have to do is fill in our valid address (or host
range)

Subnet ID Broadcast
64 127
128 191
 Example -Continued

Subnet ID Range Broadcast

64 65 - 126 127
128 129 - 190 191
 Summary
We borrowed two bits from the host portion of the IP
address to get 2 subnets with 62 hosts per subnet. Our
two subnet addresses are as follows;
192.168.1.64
255.255.255.192
and
192.168.1.128
255.255.255.192
Conclusion of Subnetting