Re: [Sheflug] Of networking, subnets and routing

["Alex Hudson" <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

> > Um, firstly, 'linuxchix' ?! Have I missed some urban/hacker takeover of
the
> > word 'chick' (other than poultry), or have you been hiding something
Chris
> > ?! ;))
> Number 2: "That would be telling..."

Fair enough ;)

> Regarding the choice of netmask ... I don't know why, but its a good
> illustrative example to show two things: firstly subnets aren't all
8/16/24
> bit bitmasks...especially in the wonderful world of CIDR; secondly ...
given
> a subnet value, how to seperate the host part from the network part. The
fact
> it was an awkward subnet makes it all the more worthwhile /if/ you can
> understand the concept of having a variable 1 < x < 254 bit netmask. :)

Yes, this is true, and certainly something I agree with ;) Thankfully, most
of us are on private subnets with perhaps one true ip address to masq
through, so we don't have this trouble  - 10.*.*.* is unlikely to be full
for a long time yet ;))) It does illustrate some of the more arcane features
of networking, though: I guess stuff like this goes down as 'Dusty Corner' -
stuff that's necessary for the thing to work, but doesn't impact 99% of
users ;) Although, a lot of people often have problems with far simpler
concepts: 'broadcast' and 'network' addresses are often not explained, or
explained very poorly. I've seen people who've tried to allocate the
broadcast address to actual machines, and wondered why things were acting
strangely. Networking surely is a cauldron of black magic on a par with
analogue electronics :S

Cheers,

Alex.

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