Question

You want to create a network of a private class A to accommodate a maximum of 1000 devices, equally distributed over four floors (each floor max250 devices). The computers on each floor must be kept on a separate subnet. The network address space must be kept minimal (use optimal design). Provide the following information:

A) The address of the super network (the aggregation of the four subnets).
B) The network addresses of the four subnets.
C) The subnet masks in both dotted decimal and slash notation, both for subnets and the supernet.
D) The first and last available host addresses of the first subnet.
E) The broadcast address of the second subnet.

Answer 1

To create a network of a private class A to accommodate a maximum of 1000 devices, equally distributed over four floors, we can assign each floor a separate subnet. The address of the supernet is 10.0.0.0, and the network addresses of the four subnets are 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2, 10.0.0.3, and 10.0.0.4. The subnet masks in both dotted decimal and slash notation, both for subnets and the supernet, are 255.255.255.0 and /24. The first and last available host addresses of the first subnet are 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.254. The broadcast address of the second subnet is 10.0.1.255.

Step-by-step explanation:

Network Design

To create a network of a private class A to accommodate a maximum of 1000 devices, equally distributed over four floors, we can assign each floor a separate subnet. Since each floor has a maximum of 250 devices, we will need a subnet with at least 256 addresses. To achieve a minimal address space, we will choose a subnet mask with a block size of 256, which is equivalent to a /24 CIDR notation.

Calculating Network Addresses

The network address of each subnet can be calculated by taking the floor number and adding it to the network address of the supernet. Let's assume the supernet address is 10.0.0.0:

First subnet: 10.0.0.0 + 1 = 10.0.0.1

Second subnet: 10.0.0.0 + 2 = 10.0.0.2

Third subnet: 10.0.0.0 + 3 = 10.0.0.3

Fourth subnet: 10.0.0.0 + 4 = 10.0.0.4

Calculating Subnet Masks

The subnet masks for both subnets and the supernet will be /24 in CIDR notation or 255.255.255.0 in dotted decimal notation.

First Subnet Host Addresses

The first available host address for the first subnet is the network address plus one, which is 10.0.0.1. The last available host address is the broadcast address minus one, which is 10.0.0.254.

Second Subnet Broadcast Address

To calculate the broadcast address of the second subnet, we add 255 to the network address: 10.0.0.2 + 255 = 10.0.0.257. However, since this address is outside the range of a /24 subnet, we need to calculate the new network address for the second subnet using the super network address and subnet mask. The new network address for the second subnet would be 10.0.1.0, and the corresponding broadcast address would be 10.0.1.255.