The most important part of the subnetting is the subnet mask. A subnet represents all the computers in a specific geographical location. Subnets allow an organization’s network to connect to the internet through a single shared network address. A subnet allows the flow of the traffic between different network hosts through the router and the gateway devices.
It segregates the network traffic based on the network configurations of the host computers. It enables the large networks to be divided into the small logical parts. The binary representation of a subnet mask can be as follows.
11111111 11111111 00000000 00000000
It is equivalent to 255.255.0.0
The subnet mask and the IP address works together.
Every class of the IP address corresponds to different subnet mask.
IP Address Class Default Subnet Mask
A 255.0.0.0
B 255.255.0.0
C 255.255.255.0
The left most bits of a subnet mask must be set to 1.
Like
11111111 00000000 00000000 00000000
11111111 11111111 00000000 00000000
11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
Each string represents the eight binary digits.
The right most bits in the subnet mask must be set to 0. There the following subnet mask is invalid.
11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111
You can calculate your subnet network with the following calculator.
http://www.subnet-calculator.com/
You can also determine the network and host portion of every IP address with the calculator on the above mentioned URL.
Subnetting helps to manage and control the bandwidth utilization of different applications and network segments. It allows you to determine that which part of the IP address is reserved for the network and which part is available for the host. Subnet masking is very important in the IP based networks.
With the subnets the network devices determine that if the computer is hosted on the local subnet or the remote network.