This tutorial explains basic concepts of Subnetting in Computer Networks with examples. Learn what Subnetting is and why we do Subnetting in computer networks along with advantages and disadvantages of Subnetting in detail.
What is Subnetting?
Subnetting is a process of dividing a single large network in multiple smaller networks. A single large network is just like a town without any sector and street address. In such a town, a postman may take 3 to 4 days in finding a single address. While if town is divided in sectors and streets, he can easily find any address in less than one hour.
Let’s take another example. Due to maintenance there is a scheduled power cut. If town is divided in sectors, electric department can make a local announcement for the affected sector rather than making an announcement for the whole town.
Besides these two examples, you can take several other examples from real life where large objects are divided in smaller sections.
Computer networks also follow the same concept. In computer networking, Subnetting is used to divide a large IP network in smaller IP networks known as subnets.
A default class A, B and C network provides 16777214, 65534, 254 hosts respectively. Having so many hosts in a single network always creates several issues such as broadcast, collision, congestion, etc.
Let’s take a simple example. In a company there are four departments; sales, production, development and management. In each department there are 50 users. Company used a private class C IP network. Without any Subnetting, all computers will work in a single large network.
Computers use broadcast messages to access and provide information in network. A broadcast message is an announcement message in computer network which is received by all hosts in network.
Earlier in this tutorial we discussed an example of electric announcement. You can relate that example with this example. In that example we learned how dividing a town in sectors can reduce announcement area.
In this example since all computers belong to same network, they will receive all broadcast messages regardless the broadcast messages which they are receiving are relevant to them or not.
Just like town is divided in sectors, this network can also be divided in subnets. Once network is divided in subnets, computers will receive only the broadcasts which belong to them.
Since company has four departments, it can divide its network in four subnets. Following figure shows same network after Subnetting.
Subnetting table
| Description | Network 1 | Network 2 | Network 3 | Network 4 |
| Network address | 192.168.1.0 | 192.168.1.64 | 192.168.1.128 | 192.168.1.192 |
| valid hosts | 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.62 | 192.168.1.65 to 192.168.1.126 | 192.168.1.129 to 192.168.1.190 | 192.168.1.193 to 192.168.1.254 |
| Broadcast address | 192.168.1.63 | 192.168.1.127 | 192.168.1.191 | 192.168.1.255 |
To learn how this table is prepared or how Subnetting is done, please see the next parts of this tutorial.
This tutorial is the second part of the article “IP Subnetting in Computer Network Step by Step Explained with Examples”. Other parts of this article are following.
Network Address Broadcast Address and IP Address Explained
This tutorial is the first part of the article. It explains IP addressing and network addressing such as IP address, subnet mask, IP address types and IP classes in detail.
Subnetting Tutorial - Subnetting Explained with Examples
This tutorial is the third part of the article. It explains the Subnetting concepts and terms such as network id, broadcast id, total hosts, valid hosts, power of 2, block size and CIDR in detail.
Subnetting Tricks Subnetting Made Easy with Examples
This tutorial is the fourth part of the article. It explains how to solve or answer any Subnetting related question in less than a minute with 50+ Subnetting examples.
VLSM Subnetting Explained with Examples
This tutorial is the fifth part of the article. It explains what VLSM Subnetting is and how it is done step by step including differences between FLSM Subnetting and VLSM Subnetting.
VLSM Subnetting Examples and Calculation Explained
This tutorial is the sixth part of the article. It explains VLSM Subnetting examples for Cisco exams and interviews.
Supernetting Tutorial: - Supernetting Explained with Examples
This tutorial is the last part of the article. It explains Supernetting in detail with examples.
Advantage of Subnetting
- Subnetting allows us to break a single large network in smaller networks. Small networks are easy to manage.
- Subnetting reduces network traffic by allowing only the broadcast traffic which is relevant to the subnet.
- By reducing unnecessary traffic, Subnetting improves overall performance of the network.
- By blocking a subnet’ traffic in subnet, Subnetting increases security of the network.
- Subnetting reduces the requirement of IP range.
Disadvantage of Subnetting
- Different subnets need an intermediate device known as router to communicate with each other.
- Since each subnet uses its own network address and broadcast address, more subnets mean more wastage of IP addresses.
- Subnetting ads complexity in network. An experienced network administrator is required to manage the subnetted network.
That’s all for this introductory part. In next parts we will learn the Subnetting components and terminology in detail. If you have any suggestion or comment about this tutorial, please mail me. If you like this tutorial, please don’t forget to share it with friends through your favorite social channel.