Ok so…. we’re still doing subnetting and Lars isn’t really covering anything new…
Basically all we’re doing right now is activities to practice. Kinda feels like maths homework….

I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the finer points but as far as I can tell it’s mostly making sense.

We’ve continued to delve deeper into subnetting and the maths behind it. Lars keeps explaining it with different examples but I’m just getting more confused by how he does it. I feel like he is not properly explaining the cause and effect of what he is doing.
I would feel like an idiot, but I’m not the only one having problems with this.

What been helping my understanding the most was an online calculator I found. By using it I could clearly see how different parts of the equation affect each other, and after some fiddling I was starting to figure out why each part was being affected in the way it was.

Subnetting allows you to partition a physical network into multiple smaller sub-networks (subnets). With this, it is possible to increase or decrease the number of IP addresses available on a single net address.

The basic structure for an IPv4 binary address with a 24 bit subnet mask is:
nnnnnnnn.nnnnnnnn.nnnnnnnn.hhhhhhhh
n = network part of the address
h = host part of the address
s = subnet part of the address
If we were to switch the first ‘h’ for an ‘s’ we would be able to use that bit as a network address. This would give us more net addresses to use but would reduce the number of IP addresses available for each address.