Question

several laptops in a hallway take a long time to acquire the wireless network. you have determined that there is a delay in obtaining an ip address on all devices in the hallway. the network administrator uses load-balancing on all access points, but you think there may be more devices attempting to get on the subnet than the network was designed for. you research and find the subnet mask to be 255.255.255.248. what is the maximum number of devices that can be active on this network at one time?

Answer 1

The maximum number of active devices on a subnet with a mask of 255.255.255.248 is 6. This calculation is derived from the formula 2^n - 2, using 3 bits available for hosts, which equals 8 total addresses minus 2 reserved addresses.

Step-by-step explanation:

The maximum number of devices that can be active on a subnet with a mask of 255.255.255.248 can be calculated using subnetting principles. This mask corresponds to a prefix notation of /29, which represents 29 bits used for the network address and the remaining 3 bits for host addresses. Since two addresses are reserved for the network and broadcast addresses, you subtract 2 from the total number of possible addresses.

To find the number of available host addresses, you use the formula 2^n - 2, where n is the number of bits available for host addresses. In this case, n = 3. Therefore, the calculation is 2^3 - 2 which equals 6. So, there can be 6 active devices on this subnet at one time.