/27 the new /24

Fri Oct 2 17:56:07 UTC 2015

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Jason Baugher <jason at thebaughers.com> wrote:
> Bill, I see where I went wrong now that I went back and re-read your
> comment. I was conflating "longer" and "shorter". Thanks for your patience
> on this trying Friday.

Hi Jason,

No sweat. Bit of an interesting history behind the terminology. We all
used to say "larger" or "smaller" when talking about netmasks but that
got confusing. Does larger mean more IP addresses (numerically smaller
netmask) or does larger mean a numerically larger netmask (fewer IP
addresses)? Some clever fellow (does anybody know who?) figured out
that longer and shorter don't present that contextual confusion. There
can be a longer netmask (more 1 bits in a row) but a "longer quantity
of IP addresses" doesn't make sense.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>