Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual page 570

an IP address belongs to the network. All those bits that are 1 mark the corresponding
bit in the IP address as belonging to the network. All bits that are 0 mark bits inside
the subnetwork. This means that the more bits are 1, the smaller the subnetwork is.
Because the netmask always consists of several successive 1 bits, it is also possible to
just count the number of bits in the netmask. In Example 30.2, "Linking IP Addresses
to the Netmask" (page 552) the first net with 24 bits could also be written as
192.168.0.0/24.
Example 30.2 Linking IP Addresses to the Netmask
IP address (192.168.0.20):
Netmask
---------------------------------------------------------------
Result of the link:
In the decimal system:
IP address (213.95.15.200): 11010101 10111111 00001111 11001000
Netmask
---------------------------------------------------------------
Result of the link:
In the decimal system:
To give another example: all machines connected with the same ethernet cable are
usually located in the same subnetwork and are directly accessible. Even when the
subnet is physically divided by switches or bridges, these hosts can still be reached di-
rectly.
IP addresses outside the local subnet can only be reached if a gateway is configured
for the target network. In the most common case, there is only one gateway that handles
all traffic that is external. However, it is also possible to configure several gateways
for different subnets.
If a gateway has been configured, all external IP packets are sent to the appropriate
gateway. This gateway then attempts to forward the packets in the same manner—from
host to host—until it reaches the destination host or the packet's TTL (time to live) ex-
pires.
552 Installation and Administration
11000000 10101000 00000000 00010100
(255.255.255.0): 11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
11000000 10101000 00000000 00000000
(255.255.255.0): 11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
11010101 10111111 00001111 00000000
192. 168.
213. 95.
0. 0
15. 0