3 – Understanding Network ID, Host ID Range and Broadcast ID 

Network ID

This is the portion of the IP Address that identifies the Network and makes it unique

Please note this:

In any Class A IP Address. Then Network address is represented by the 1st Octet

Example

10.0.0.0 ( All host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

Or 15.0.0.0 ( All host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

In any Class B IP Address. The network address is represented by the 1st and 2nd Octet

Example

172.16.0.0 ( All host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

Or 160.2.0.0 ( All host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

In any Class C IP Address. The network address is represented by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd  Octet

Example

192.168.0.0 ( Host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

Or 201.21.100.0 ( Host ID portion automatically equates to 0s)

Host ID Range

How do you detect the Number of Host IP Address when you use a particular IP Address Class. We use the 2^n – 2 formula

Where n represents the number of host bits in the Host ID portion of an IP address.

For Example and IP Address 10.0.0.0

Details

This mean 10.0.0.0 is the NID; to get the amount of Host IP Address

We do 2^24 – 2

Where 24 is the number of Host ID bits

So our answer is 16,777,514

=> from 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 we’ll get 16,777,514 host IP addresses

Broadcast ID

This is usually the last address in a network address range