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For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask, which is the bitmask that, when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an IP address.
A subnet mask is a bitmask that encodes the prefix length associated with an IPv4 address or network in quad-dotted notation: 32 bits, starting with a number of 1-bits equal to the prefix length, ending with 0-bits, and encoded in four-part dotted-decimal format: 255.255.255.0. A subnet mask encodes the same information as a prefix length but ...
The term subnet mask is only used within IPv4. Both IP versions however use the CIDR concept and notation. In this, the IP address is followed by a slash and the number (in decimal) of bits used for the network part, also called the routing prefix. For example, an IPv4 address and its subnet mask may be 192.0.2.1 and 255.255.255.0, respectively.
The network address and subnet mask of the interface, along with the interface type and number, are entered into the routing table as a directly connected network. A remote network is a network that can only be reached by sending the packet to another router. Routing table entries to remote networks may be either dynamic or static.
eth0 is the interface name of the network interface card representing an Ethernet port. ppp0 is a PPPoE interface, which is configured as the default route in this example. A default route is recognized by the destination 0.0.0.0 and the flag G. A network router is identified by the network mask 255.255.255.255 and the flag H.
The network with the longest subnet mask or network prefix that matches the destination IP address is the next-hop network gateway. The process repeats until a packet is delivered to the destination host, or earlier along the route, when a router has no default route available and cannot route the packet otherwise.
The periodic routing updates do not carry subnet information, lacking support for variable length subnet masks (VLSM). This limitation makes it impossible to have different-sized subnets inside of the same network class. In other words, all subnets in a network class must have the same size.
A shortcut to this process (for common masks using only 0 and 1 bit placements) is to simply take the host's IP address and set all bits in the host identifier portion of the address (any bit positions which hold a 0 in the subnet mask) to 1. As shown in the example below, in order to calculate the directed broadcast address to transmit a ...