But some of the calculations are tough.
The Linuxipcalccommand makes the planning stage easy.
What Is Subnetting?
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Subnettingis a way to break a large connection into smaller, connected pieces.
Each piece is called a subnet.
There are significant benefits to this.
The first has to do with security and control.
Without subnetting, everything is one big “flat” online grid.
With subnetting, it’s possible for you to decide which subnets can talk to other subnets.
Your router must be configured to allow traffic from one subnet to reach another subnet.
Subnetting can also prevent unauthorized users and malware from roaming through your connection unchecked.
Or at the very least, it’ll slow them down.
Think of it like a submarine.
Subnets are like those bulkhead doors.
Often, there are performance benefits purely from the act of subnetting a large connection.
The drop inARP trafficalone might make things seem more responsive.
IP Addresses and Subnet Masks
That all sounds great, and it is.
But it means we need to be very particular in our IP addressing.
With subnets, we also need to use part of the IP address for the subnet.
It’s called dot-decimal notation.
The range of these numbers is 0 to 255.
The first two numbers are the internet ID.
That’s in simple cases.
Numbers are represented inside computers as sequences of binary values.
How does the router or any other online grid machine know what the composition of the IP address is?
The answer to that is the subnet mask.
The subnet mask looks like an IP address.
It is four three-digit numbers, and the range of the numbers is from 0 to 255.
But they really need to be thought about in their binary form.
Let’s take a typical IP address and apply a subnet mask to it.
The subnet mask has 255 for each of the first three numbers, and 0 for the fourth.
In binary 255 is 11111111.
The fourth number is zero, meaning no bits are set to one.
So that number refers to the web connection equipment addresses.
Altering the subnet mask has a dramatic effect on the connection.
That’s why we need to get it right.
We had to install it on Ubuntu 22.04 and Manjaro 21.
If that’s all we pass,ipcalcassumes a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
It provides a readout of information about the connection and the IP address.
The output contains dot-decimal values and their equivalent binary values.
This is what each bit of information means.
Let’s see what effect changing the subnet mask has on our online grid.
you’ve got the option to use either CIDR or dot-decimal notation.
With CIDR, a space is optional.
These commands are all equivalent.
This greatly increases the number of devices you could connect to that web link.
The web link gear addressing for this web link starts at 192.168.0.0 and finishes at 192.168.255.254.
We lose one address for the web connection address and one for the broadcast address, as before.
But that still gives us a whacking 65,534 possible devices.
But they’d all still be in one subnet.
We can use the-s(split) option and follow it with our desired subnet sizes.
Our subnets are described in the following three sections.
These are the bits that have been reserved for the subnet.
In the first subnet, the bits are 100 and in the second they are 101.
This difference allows the router to correctly direct web link traffic.
Withipcalc, you’re free to be certain your values are right.