ZyXEL Communications NWA-3550, User Manual

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Appendix E IP Addresses and Subnetting
NWA-3500/NWA-3550 User’s Guide
385
Subnetting
You can use subnetting to divide one network into multiple sub-networks. In the
following example a network administrator creates two sub-networks to isolate a
group of servers from the rest of the company network for security reasons.
In this example, the company network address is 192.168.1.0. The first three
octets of the address (192.168.1) are the network number, and the remaining
octet is the host ID, allowing a maximum of 2
8
– 2 or 254 possible hosts.
The following figure shows the company network before subnetting.
Figure 281 Subnetting Example: Before Subnetting
You can “borrow” one of the host ID bits to divide the network 192.168.1.0 into
two separate sub-networks. The subnet mask is now 25 bits (255.255.255.128 or
/25).
The “borrowed” host ID bit can have a value of either 0 or 1, allowing two
subnets; 192.168.1.0 /25 and 192.168.1.128 /25.