☁️ AWS 👨💻Subnet Masking Explained 💪 Explained 🚀
The host bits are the bits in the subnet mask that are used to identify individual hosts on the network. The first and last bits of the subnet mask are always reserved for the network ID and the broadcast address, respectively. So, the number of host bits is simply the number of bits in the subnet mask that are not reserved.
For example, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 has 8 host bits. This means that there can be 2 8/sup - 2 = 254 hosts on a network with this subnet mask.
Here is a table of the number of hosts that can be supported by different subnet masks:
Subnet Mask Number of Host Bits Number of Hosts
255.0.0.0 (/8) 8 16,777,214
255.255.0.0 (/16) 16 65,536
255.255.255.0 (/24) 24 254
255.255.255.128 (/25) 25 128
255.255.255.192 (/26) 26 64