ZyXEL Communications P-660HW-D Series - Manual (Page 272)

P-660HW-D Series User’s Guide
271 Appendix E IP Subnetting
Since the first octet of a class “A” IP address must contain a “0”, the first octet of a class “A”
address can have a value of 0 to 127.
Similarly the first octet of a class “B” must begin with “10”, therefore the first octet of a class
“B” address has a valid range of 128 to 191. The first octet of a class “C” address begins with
“110”, and therefore has a range of 192 to 223.
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). A subnet mask has 32 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.
Subnet masks are expressed in dotted decimal notation just as IP addresses are. The “natural”
masks for class A, B and C IP addresses are as follows.
Subnetting
With subnetting, the class arrangement of an IP address is ignored. For example, a class C
address no longer has to have 24 bits of network number and 8 bits of host ID. With
subnetting, some of the host ID bits are converted into network number bits. By convention,
subnet masks always consist of a continuous sequence of ones beginning from the left most bit
of the mask, followed by a continuous sequence of zeros, for a total number of 32 bits.
Since the mask is always a continuous number of ones beginning from the left, followed by a
continuous number of zeros for the remainder of the 32 bit mask, you can simply specify the
number of ones instead of writing the value of each octet. This is usually specified by writing
a “/” followed by the number of bits in the mask after the address.
Table 103 Allowed IP Address Range By Class
CLASS
ALLOWED RANGE OF FIRST OCTET
(BINARY) ALLOWED RANGE OF FIRST OCTET
(DECIMAL)
Class A 00000000 to 01111111 0 to 127
Class B 10000000 to 10111111 128 to 191
Class C 11000000 to 11011111 192 to 223
Class D 11100000 to 11101111 224 to 239
Table 104 “Natural” Masks
CLASS NATURAL MASK
A 255.0.0.0
B 255.255.0.0
C 255.255.255.0