Public service announcement ...

Jun 22, 2025 Last reply: 1 year ago 40 Replies

Exactly. Look at the reasons WHY we have subnets AT ALL.

(That is, networks on different addresses connected by a router)

The original issue was to reduce wide area network traffic. And allow multiple routes to a singe destination to co-exist.

The Internet was built originally as a military network

Then the ideas of local area networks arose. Being areas of high traffic that was isolated from the Internet.

Again here subbnetting was a way to reduce traffic density - especially in the days of coax cable Ethernet.

But Ethernet itself offered another possibility of routing at the Ethernet level, as every machine had not just a unique IP address but a unique MAC Ethernet address

And self learning bridges first, and then Ethernet switches used MAC level filtering to contain traffic to single wire segments .

So the *traffic* problems was solved by star network structured cabling and switches. leaving the only purpose of subnetting to *limit access*.

So I can have a separate wifi login that goes to a different subnet that restricts access to my home network for house 'guests' who still ant to use the internet

But in terms of opening up spaces for a home network to have more than

253 local machines on it (excluding the router) there is simply no point in creating a *routed* subnet. DHCP can then issue the correct netmasks to operate on that network.

Especially in today's WiFi connection which shares radio space anyway - we have lost the benefits of Ethernet cables and switches.

Just make your home network 1024 machines wide, or whatever

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