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Paula Livingstone writing · projects · tools

Tool

Make sense of any subnet.

Type a CIDR block, 10.0.0.0/22, 192.168.1.0/24, and see exactly what it covers: the network and broadcast addresses, the usable host range, the mask, and a map of the address space you can split, in your browser.

How CIDR works

An IPv4 address is 32 bits. The /N in a CIDR block says the first N bits are fixed, the network prefix, and the remaining 32−N bits are free to number hosts. So a /24 fixes 24 bits and leaves 8 for hosts: 256 addresses, of which the first is the network address and the last is the broadcast, leaving 254 usable. Each step up in prefix length halves the block; each step down doubles it. Splitting a network into subnets just means borrowing host bits to become network bits.