Cool Useless (unless you're studying networking) IP Addressing/Subnetting Knowledge!

Ok so this stuff is rly cool to me for some reason but basically im taking a course to get certified and rn we are learning about subnetting and its pretty cool!!!

ok so like this is how computers figure out whether or not they can talk to each other

so lets say we got this IP address: 192.168.5.6 and lets assume the prefix (a.k.a subnet mask) is /26.

Since the IP begins with 192, it is considered Class C (basically back in the day, for splitting up types of networks, IP octets were split into classes. we dont use classes anymore really but they still determine the DEFAULT PREFIX)

Since the default prefix of a Class C network is /24, a.k.a a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and the IP we are working with has a prefix of /26 or 255.255.255.192, we can say that we have two bits of subnetting. Based on the bits of subnetting, we can get the total amount of subnets (2^subnet bits) which is 2^2 or 4 subnets.

Now that we know we have 4 subnets, we can find our total hosts!

Host bits are determined by subtracting the length of an IPV4 address (32 bits) by the active prefix (/26 in this case) which means we have 6 host bits!

From this, we can also determine our subnet increment! (basically how many addresses exist in each subnet), and 2^6 is 64! That means that every time an address reaches a multiple of 64, it begins a new subnet!

As for the total hosts per subnet, simply subtract the subnet increment by 2. This eliminates the addresses reserved for the beginning of the subnet, as well as the broadcast address (the address that talks to everything in the subnet).

And thats basically it, now you know stuff about your IP and subnet and this may or may not be useful at all!

FOR THE RECORD, THERE ARE CALCULATORS FOR THIS SORTA THING!