What is a subnet?

There are millions of networks around the world, and they all vary in
size. However, the larger a network is, the harder it is to manage and
maintain. When a network is divided into smaller pieces, those pieces
are called subnets. A subnet is a small network.
Subnetting is beneficial in many ways:
• Easier maintenance;
• Advanced network security so that one subnet can’t access the other
one;
• Reduced network traffic;
• When you can subnet your network, you don’t need to acquire
additional IP addresses from ISPs (internet service providers).
• However, subnetting often requires additional hardware such as
routers, so it also comes with a cost.
• Just like every address is defined by a street name and a house number, an IP address consists of a
network component and a host component (if you’re wondering what your IP is, this article will explain
this in detail). Let’s take 192.168.123.132 as an example. The first three octets (192.168.123.) represent
the network and the last octet identifies a machine on your network.
• IP addresses consist of 32 binary bits (4 x 8), but since they are long and complex, we use a dot decimal
system.
• 192.168.123.132 = 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100
• The subnet mask reflects the network portion in an IP address. It might look look something this:
• 255.255.255.0 = 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000
• When you combine them, you get:
• 11000000.10101000.01111011.00000000 (network address: 192.168.123.0)
00000000.00000000.00000000.10000100 (host address: 000.000.000.132)
• 192.168.123.0 is your subnet, while 192.168.123.132 is a destination address (a device in your subnet). 
What are the different classes of IP addresses?

• Class A IP address
• Class A networks use a subnet mask of 255.0.0.0 and have 0-127 as their first octet. It allows 126 networks
and almost 17 million hosts per network.
• Class B IP address
• Class B uses a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 and has 128-191 as its first octet. It is used by medium and large
networks. Class B allows around 16,000 networks and 65,000 hosts per network.
• Class C IP address
• Class C is used for local area networks (LAN) and allows 2 million networks with 254 hosts each. Class C uses
a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and has 192-223 as its first octet.
• What is the use of Class D and Class E in IP addresses?
• Class D is reserved for multicasting (transmitting streaming media and other data for multiple users). It
ranges from 224 to 239 and doesn't have a subnet mask as multicasting is not destined for a particular host.
• Class E ranges from 240 to 255 and also doesn’t have a subnet mask. It is used for experimental and study
purposes.
Problem first to find a default subnet mask
for the given IP address
• Given IP address: 192.168.10.0 Number of hosts in network =50
The above IP address belongs to class C therefore the default subnet
mask is 3 byte network id and 1 byte host id
Subnet mask : 255.255.255.0
11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000
To represent number of hosts. The last byte can be written as
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0
=32+16+2=50 To represent number of hosts we need 6 bits 110010
• Since I require only six bits for hosts. Here 1 is used to represent
network and 0 for host. Since I require only 6 bits
• The new subnet mask is
11111111.11111111.11111111.11000000
128+64=192
255.255.255.192 // new subnet mask id
It can be written also as 255.255.255.192/26
26 indicates number of bits in 1 which
indicates network bit
• 255.255.255.192 Now by using subnet mask we need to find subnet
address
256-192=64
The range of address in each network will be 64.
From the given IP address above
192.168.10.0
192.168.10.64
192.168.10.128
192.168.10.192