IP Subnetting Conclusion

Conclusion

Whew! We have covered a lot of ground. Let's recap what we've learned:



For components to communicate on a network, each needs a unique address. Forcomputer networks using the Internet Protocol, these addresses are numeric and are commonly referred to as IPs .
To make efficient use of IP addresses we also need logical groupings of devices. Asubnet then, is a logical organization of connected network devices.
Binary numbers look very confusing but it's really just because we use the base10 numbering system day to day. The concept of binary numbering is the same.
Think of the Internet Protocol as simply the rules of communication.
IP addresses are written in the form of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, where each IP address belongs to a certain class depending on the first octet.
Subnetting involves dividing the network into smaller portions called subnets. In a sense, the IP address then has three components - the network part, the subnet part and, finally, the host part.
All a subnet mask does is indicate how many bits are being "borrowed" from the host component of an IP address.
Some IP addresses are used for special purposes.
Public versus private IPs are similar in theory to public telephone numbers versus private extensions.
CIDR is used to adapt the concept of subnetting to the entire Internet. It's sometimes referred to as supernetting.
Variable length subnet masking (VLSM) is another concept that essentially refers to subnetting a subnet.
IPv6 is the future. It not only adds to the number of available IP addresses but also eliminates the need for CIDR and network masks in IPv6.
There are three ways to write an IPv6 address: Preferred, compressed and mixed.

Hopefully that helps shed some light on the subject of subnetting.