machines with different submasks can ping each other, why?

learnfast · 03-11-2005, 06:20 AM

I am trying to learn networking from my redhat 9 book:

On one machine I have:
ip: 192.168.33.33
netmask: 255.255.128.0

On another machine I have:
ip: 192.168.33.34
netmask: 255.252.0.0

And they CAN STILL PING EACH OTHER, why is this?
From my reading I understand that it is the point of submasks
to create different AREAS to have unique IP addresses?

Thanks.

foo_bar_foo · 03-11-2005, 09:11 AM

the first one is
11000000 10101000 00100001 00100001

the second one is
11000000 10101000 00100001 00100010

so a netmask to exclude all others is
11111111 11111111 11111111 11111100

or
255.255.255.252

anything more unrestrictive than that also contains these addresses

255.252.0.0 is netmask that includes well over 65,000 addresses