subnet question

AndrewA1981

Good day!

I am studying for ICND1 and have a question on subnetting


more of a why than how, what is the point of subnetting a private network? If a router is needed to pass traffic between subnets why not just use a new network?

for example you need 3 networks that can each support 200 hosts, why not just use 192.168.1.0, 192.160.2.0, 3.0 etc.

It's extremely possible I am confused in this matter but I would like to clear it up, thank you for any help

techie2012

AndrewA1981 wrote: »

Good day!

I am studying for ICND1 and have a question on subnetting


more of a why than how, what is the point of subnetting a private network? If a router is needed to pass traffic between subnets why not just use a new network?

for example you need 3 networks that can each support 200 hosts, why not just use 192.168.1.0, 192.160.2.0, 3.0 etc.

It's extremely possible I am confused in this matter but I would like to clear it up, thank you for any help

Well yeah, if you needed 200 hosts per network then you would use a /24 which would provide you with 254 hosts per subnet. What if you only needed 50 hosts though. Then you would need to subnet the network that you have to a /26 and the subnets would be 192.168.0.0, .64, .128, .192.

AndrewA1981

I see, although I'm curious why using another network wouldn't also work in this situation? Say you need any number of hosts on a private network, what is the underlying reason to use subnets instead of using a new network?

Webmaster

Simply because the amount of different networks available is limited. Using another network would certainly work though, and in many cases that's what people do. There are however situations where you (for example at a branch office) get assigned a limited amount of class C IP networks that you need to subnet further to accommodate for all the networks/lans/vlans you have.

AndrewA1981

ah very good, thank you!