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From: per@erix.UUCP (Per Hedeland)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Subnetting
Message-ID: <1624@erix.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jun 88 06:54:36 GMT
References: <1607@erix.UUCP>
Reply-To: per@erix.ericsson.se (Per Hedeland)
Organization: Ericsson Telecom, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 26


While it may be a bit late, I thought I should post a short summary of the
information I got in response to my query a few weeks back - it did generate
some discussion, after all. If you recall, the issue was how to use subnetting
on a network structure with a big backbone net and many small ones hanging
off of it. I think the below is the essence of what I found out; I also have
a pile of mail for those particularly interested.

- Unequal-sized subnets, whether or not a Good Thing, is not currently
  implemented in any generally accepted way (and thus of little interest to
  us).

- Partitioned subnets (i.e. subnets of a given net interconnected only by some
  other net) are out.

- One can have several logical subnets on the same wire (i.e. the backbone in
  our case), thus effectively increasing the address space, at the expense of
  some manual "routing" (i.e. gateways have to be explicitly told that the
  different subnets can be accessed via the same interface - hosts on such
  a wire can be "fooled" into believing that it's all one (bigger) subnet).

We will probably go for the latter method, with a long-term goal of splitting
our backbone by using dedicated routers.

Thanks to all who offered help and advice!
---Per Hedeland