I know what subnetting is for. That’s why I know which RFC range to use. I’m talking based on the number of devices and needed groupings, 172 is a good sweet spot where 198.x would be a bit tight and 10.x is complete overkill.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Could you please explain, how 172.x is different "size" than 10.x? Don't both of those have 255*255*255 spaces?

Edit: Ok, I made ChatGPT explain it to me. Apparently, with 172.x the convention is to only use range from 172.16.x.x to 172.31.x.x because that range is designated for private networks under some internet regulations...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah. Here’s a breakdown of the allocations and their sizes:

192.168.0.0/16 - 65,536 addresses
172.16.0.0/12 - 1,048,576 addresses
10.0.0.0/8 - 16,777,216 addresses

Most home applications only need a single /24 (256 addresses) so they are perfectly fine with 192.168.0.0/24, but as you get larger businesses, you don’t use every single address but instead break it out by function so it’s easier to know what is what and to provide growth in each area.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But tbh, I still don't see why you can't just use 10.x but only as many subnets as you need.

I know jack shit about networking, but I've set up OpenWrt routers a couple of times, and set my home network to 10.99. because that was suggested by a ZeroTier tutorial and I thought that's cool.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

You’re technically correct, you can use any of them. It’s honestly just a matter of preference.