IP Address Design Inefficiencies

Network Class

Addresses Required

Addresses Available

Addresses Wasted

A

100

16,777,214

16,777,114


B

100

00,065,534

00,065,434


C

100

00,000,254

00,000,154

Now multiply each entry in Table 2-3 by the 50 networks that are required and you can easily see that regardless of which address class we choose, an enormous number of IP addresses will be wasted. Also, if we are to have connectivity to the Internet, then the network will have to advertise 50 networks to the Internet routers. Multiply that by the number of campuses in the world and you have a situation where the size of the Internet routing tables becomes unmanageable. How do we overcome these problems? In a word, subnetting.