- Having one large network is not a good thing,
because you have one large broadcast domain.
How would you fix the out of control problem
in a network like this?
It's better to break it up
and create four smaller manageable networks
to create smaller broadcast domains.
To make that happen, you would need subnets,
which is the best way to break up a giant network
into a bunch of smaller ones.
Subnetting an IP network is an indispensable skill
central to mastering networking in general.
Forewarned is forearmed.
So prepare yourself.
Being able to subnet quickly and accurately
can be pretty challenging,
and you'll need time to practice what you've learned
to really nail it.
I'm not kidding.
This is so important,
you should really graph this into your brain.
Subnetting works by borrowing bits in the host section
of a network address.
By changing the length of the host address,
we can create subnets of various sizes to serve users.
This graphic shows a subnetted network.
The 192.168.10x addresses is shown,
each represents a subnet.
Without subnets, all users would be in one broadcast domain.
Creating subnetworks is essentially the act of
taking bits from the host portion of the address
and reserving them to define the subnet address instead.
This will result in fewer bits for defining hosts,
which is something you'll always want to keep in mind.