Tag Archives: ipv4

Subnetting – “I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed”

CCENT, , , , ,

Tom Cruise is wicked fast at subnetting!

Subnetting is King:

What is one of the most critical areas for students in the CCENT and CCNA exams when it comes to a pass or fail? Well, it is clear. Their ability to subnet fast and furious. And of course, accurately. This post reviews the approach I take in the exam. I am betting you have an even quicker method for speed subnetting – be sure to share it with all of us in the comments section below.

Be Careful:

Make sure you fully understand subnetting from a “long hand” binary perspective as well as the need for subnetting before you start quickly jumping to shortcut approaches like we do here. If you do not take the time to do this, you can have huge gaps in your understating that could cause severe career harm!

ICND1 Sample Question: 

Question: What is the last usable address in the subnet of a host with the address 192.168.1.133 and the subnet mask of 255.255.255.240?

Step 1: Since the is the first subnetting question I have encountered in my exam, I am going to use this as my opportunity to build my Powers of Two reference chart on my scratch paper.

2^7=128  |  2^6=64  |  2^5=32  |  2^4=16  |  2^3=8  |  2^2-=4 | 2  ^1=2  |  2^0=1

Step 2: How many bits of subnetting are used in the fourth octet here of our subnet mask (240)? My Power of Two chart tells me. 1 bit = 128; 2 bits = 192; 3 bits = 224; 4 bits = 240.

Step 3: I go four bits deep (from left to right) in the Power of Two chart. This tells me that the subnets increment on 16:

192.168.1.16…32…48…64…80…96…112…128…144

Step 4: We can see that this host lives on the 192.168.1.128 subnet. The broadcast address for this subnet is one less than the next subnet of 144, so that is 143. The last usable is 142. Our answer – 192.168.1.142.

What is great when you are practicing is that you can check your work and your understating! Visit the online subnet calculator to make sure you were right! Hey Cisco – give us online access in the exam 😉

The Mechanics of IPv4 Fragmentation

CCIE Security, , ,

Apartment-Audience-Fragmentation

It is important that we understand IPv4 fragmentation as we study for many Cisco and related certifications.

Remember that the IPv4 header has several fields and flags within fields that are critical to this process. This article will review the process and will also point out these important values in the IPv4 header that are critical to the process.

When the sending router in the IPv4 network sees the MTU cannot accommodate the packet size, it will fragment the packet. The key to this process is the fact that the receiving system must be provided with the appropriate information in order for it to perform the reassembly.

The first field that is critical is the Total Length field in the IPv4 header. As you might guess, after the fragmentation, this value indicates the total length of the fragment.

A unique identifier is assigned to each message being fragmented. This value is placed in the Identification field in the IPv4 header of each fragment sent. The Identification field is 16 bits wide, so a total of 65,536 different identifiers can be used. The source device decides on the specific method for ensures each ID value is unique.

Another key value in the header that is used is the More Fragments flag. This flag is set to a 1 for all fragments except the last one, which is set to 0. When the fragment with a value of 0 in the More Fragments flag is seen, the destination knows it has received the last fragment of the message.

The other critical field is the Fragment Offset field. This field solves the problem of sequencing fragments by indicating to the recipient device where in the overall message each particular fragment should be placed. The field is 13 bits wide, so the offset can be from 0 to 8191. Fragments are specified in units of 8 bytes, which is why fragment length must be a multiple of 8.

While the above recaps what is required for the fragmentation process, there are some other values in the header that are related to fragmentation. Let’s quickly review those:

  • The Copied option – if a packet containing options must be fragmented, some of the options may be copied to each of the fragments – this is controlled by the Copied setting in each option field.
  • The Don’t Fragment flag – this flag can be set to 1 by a transmitting device to specify that a datagram not be fragmented in transit. This is often also for testing the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of a link.