158Appendix E: Understanding IP and IP addressing
departments. Each department expects to use fewer than 254 host addresses, so the entire third byte of the address is chosen for the subnetwork number. To reserve the third byte for the subnetwork number, they use subnetwork mask 255.255.255.0. Figure 37 on page 158 illustrates this point.
Figure 37 Address mask example
Network node (133.101.1.8)
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| Class | B |
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| network ID |
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133 |
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| 8 | ||
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+ Subnet mask (255.255.255.0) |
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Class |
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B network ID |
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255 |
| 255 | 255 |
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= Subnet network (for example, 133.101.1.0) |
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133 |
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| 101 |
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Network 133.101.1.0 is a subnet of network 131.101.0.0.
There is no official requirement that the subnet mask consist only of contiguous bits. However, in the presence of variable width subnetworks, non- contiguous masks can lead to ambiguous routing when subnet masks partially overlap (such as 255.255.255.0 and 255.255.0.255).