I have a question I am so totally lost on, that i need some insight. Im not looking for the answer just help.?

Question

Your company network currently consists of workstations, switches and a router. There are four departments: Sales, Marketing, Finance and Accounting. Each department requires that they be on a separate subnet. Finance and Accounting are working on a project and need their subnets to communicate while the project is active. The company will use the 192.168.100.0/24 network.

determine the subnet mask that will provide the maximum number of hosts on each subnet and define the address ranges for the different departments.

Answer 1

The subnet mask will be /26 and the address range for each of the department will be as:

Sales:

192.168.100.0- to - 192.168.100.63

And the number of hosts will be 62.

subnet mask will be 255.255.255.192

Marketing:

192.168.100.64- to - 192.168.100.127

And the number of hosts will be 62.

subnet mask will be 255.255.255.192

Finance:

192.168.100.128- to - 192.168.100.191

And the number of hosts will be 62.

subnet mask will be 255.255.255.192

Accounting:

192.168.100.192-  to - 192.168.100.255

And the number of hosts will be 62.

subnet mask will be 255.255.255.192

You can do this in two ways to allow  Finance and Accounting department to communicate with each other which are as follows:

1>Either you connect the two networks (or subnets)  of Finance and Accounting using Router.So that they can communicate through the router.

2>Use the subnet of /25 for the two networks and in this case their address range will be from 192.168.100.128 - to - 192.168.100.255 and the subnet mask will be 255.255.255.128. We cannot use the address range of 192.168.100.0 - to - 192.168.100.127 since this is already used by Sales and Marketing department.

Answer 2

Here are some sites to learn and practice subnetting:

http://www.subnettingquestions.com

http://easysubnet.com/

Answer 3

If you want more than just the answer, try the following site. It is a great method to learn how subnets work.

http://www.learntosubnet.com/

Its free or you can order the CD but it has great information and really helps to understand subnetting.

Answer 4

You can use 4 subnets with 62 hosts each

ranges 0 to 63, 64 to 127, 128 to 191 and 192 to 254

the first and last address can not be used first = network address last = broadcast address thus leaving you with 62 host per subnet