Appendix E IP Addresses and Subnetting

The following figure shows an example IP address in which the first three octets (192.168.1) are the network number, and the fourth octet (16) is the host ID.

Figure 280 Network Number and Host ID

How much of the IP address is the network number and how much is the host ID varies according to the subnet mask.

Subnet Masks

A subnet mask is used to determine which bits are part of the network number, and which bits are part of the host ID (using a logical AND operation). The term “subnet” is short for “sub-network”.

A subnet mask has 32 bits. If a bit in the subnet mask is a “1” then the corresponding bit in the IP address is part of the network number. If a bit in the subnet mask is “0” then the corresponding bit in the IP address is part of the host ID.

The following example shows a subnet mask identifying the network number (in bold text) and host ID of an IP address (192.168.1.2 in decimal).

Table 100 Subnet Masks

 

1ST

2ND

3RD

4TH

 

OCTET:

OCTET:

OCTET:

OCTET

 

(192)

(168)

(1)

(2)

IP Address (Binary)

11000000

10101000

00000001

00000010

 

 

 

 

 

Subnet Mask (Binary)

11111111

11111111

11111111

00000000

 

 

 

 

 

382

 

NWA-3500/NWA-3550 User’s Guide