What is a supernet?

Supernet is a group of computer networks or subnet that are considered the only entity. The concept was created in response to the shortcomings of the "Classful" addressing system in which the Internet protocol addresses (IP) are distributed to the funds of predefined size known as blocks. Supernetting allows organizations to customize their network size and reduce demand for a network routing device aggregation of many separate routes.

For Supernets and Class Systems, IP addresses are divided into at least two parts: a network identifier that specifies the network, and a host identifier that specifies a computer or other device in this network. The total length of the IP address is limited, so the size of one identifier limits the size of the other. Before the supernet concept, IP addresses were distributed in blocks, according to the "class", which determined how much of each address was devoted to one type of identifier. In the “ADDRESS ADREST, Network identifier is relatively short andIt leaves space for only 127 network blocks, while the relative length of the host identifier allows each of these 127 networks to have more than 16 million hosts. Two more common classes are classes B, which can support up to 65,534 hosts and 16,384 networks and class C, allowing only more than two million networks.

Supernet's idea was created in response to several problems with the Classful addressing system. Many companies and organizations needed more than 254 hosts available from the C -Class network block, but much less than 65,534 addresses listed in the B -Class block. the load of the routing device that had to storeLe more and more information to achieve a growing number of networks and hosts. In 1993, it officially supported the Supernet concept to solve the Supernet concept, the officially approved Supernet concept.

Supernetting, also known as routing without intermain class (CIDR), eliminates the previous concept of classes. Supernet is basically a group of smaller network blocks or subnet, which is considered one large network. Network identifiers in Supernet can be almost any length, allowing the network size to be adapted to the needs of the organization. For example, two C -class blocks could be supernetted by a total of more than 500 addresses. This system also allows the aggregation of routes that groups information about the direction of the direction of various hosts or networks into a single "summary" route.

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Supernet concept has several disadvantages, especially increased Complexity in CIDR compared to the Classful addressing system and a requirement for new routing protocols that supported the CIDR. The ability to adapt the length IThe network dentifier made it difficult for the system to distinguish between the network identifier and the host identifier. A new style of IP addresses was introduced to solve this problem. In this style called CIDR notation or slash, the slash monitors the IP address followed by the number of bits used for the network ID. In example 192.168.25.5/24, the first 24 bits of the network identifier are, while the remaining eight bits is the host identifier.