While studying networking, I came across an important point regarding IPv4 and address allocation. In IPv4, an address consists of:
🔹 Network ID (the network part)
🔹 Host ID (the device part)
The Subnet Mask determines this division.
Example: 192.168.254.0/24
📌 The first 24 bits represent the network.
📌 The last 8 bits represent devices, meaning 254 devices per network.
But if we reduce the Subnet Mask below /16 (meaning we increase the number of devices within each network), several problems arise:
❌ Broadcast Storms – As the network grows, every device sends Broadcast data to all others, leading to network congestion and reduced performance.
❌ Security Risks – All devices within the same network can easily see each other, increasing the risk of internal attacks.
❌ Difficult Management – Dividing a large network into smaller Subnets is easier to manage and more secure than an unorganized large network.
💡 The solution? Maintaining a reasonable Subnet Mask (e.g., /24 or /16) and logically segmenting the network.
Every device connected to the internet needs an IP Address, and IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, meaning the total number of possible addresses is:
💡 2³² = 4,294,967,296 unique global addresses.
But the bigger problem is that the number of devices worldwide is far greater than 4.3 billion! 😬
With the rise of mobile phones, computers, servers, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and countless other connected devices, available IPv4 addresses have nearly run out!
We implemented temporary solutions like ❌ NAT (Network Address Translation) to reuse addresses within private networks, but it's not enough and causes issues with some applications.
📌 We'll discuss this topic further in the next post—stay tuned! 😉🔥