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I read an article at this Link and got very confuse, If you take a look at the link you can see thoes two lines:

This is the first part of the article that got me confused:

1) It tells us which network the device is part of (Network ID).

2) It identifies that unique device within the network (Node ID).

If i am understanding correct the Node ID = Host ID. But the word node make me think that mabye the Node ID refers to the Subnet ID, Whereas the Host ID refers to the individual host within the subnet.

This is the second part of the article that got me confused:

If you can take a look at the end of the article there is a table:

I didn't understand the difference between the Host bits and the Node bits.

If some one can please take an IP and "break" it into (Network ID, Subnet ID, Node ID, Host ID), Thank you all and have a nice day.

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1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The article you linked to is outdated. It refers to class A/B/C/D/E networks.

Those have not been used in a decade or more. We long switched to CIDR.

For information on Classless Inter-Domain Routing see these articles:

For an easy description of IPv4 networking, including the difference between 'host bits' and 'network bits' see this article on our sister site.

But summarised:

  • For IPv4 networks we use a 32 bit number.
  • The first part of that number describes the network, the second part the host.
  • The netmask indicates which part of the number describes the network and which the host.


Lets look at the first part and write it in binary:

192     .168     .1       .2  
11000000 10101000 00000001 00000010

Next take the /25 and write it in binary (25 times a one)

11111111 11111111 11111111 10000000

Network part in bold:

> 11000000 10101000 00000001 00000010  
> 11111111 11111111 11111111 10000000   
> 11000000 10101000 00000001 00000010
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Thank you Hennes, But just to know if you can see the link:firewall.cx/networking-topics/protocols/protocols-ip/… can you tall me what is the node, Thank you, and have a nice day. –  Aviel Fadida Dec 1 '12 at 14:07

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