Experiment No.

-1
Roll No.-

Aim : To study CIDR (Classless inter Domain

Routing) .
Theory :
CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing, sometimes known as supernetting) is
a way to allocate and specify the Internet addresses used in inter-domain
routing more flexibly than with the original system of Internet Protocol (IP)
address classes.
Supernetting, also called Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), is a way to
aggregate multiple Internet addresses of the same class. The original
Internet Protocol (IP) defines IP addresses in four major classes of address
structure, Classes A through D. Each class allocates one portion of the 32-bit
Internet address format to a network address and the remaining portion to
the specific host machines within the network. Using supernetting, the
network address 192.168.2.0/24 and an adjacent address 192.168.3.0/24
can be merged into 192.168.2.0/23.
Supernetting was created as a way to solve the problem of routing tables
growing beyond the ability of current software and people to manage and to
provide a solution to the exhaustion of Class B network address space.
Supernetting allows one routing table entry to represent an aggregation of
networks much like one area code represents an aggregation of telephone
numbers in an area.
In CIDR , an IP network is represented by a prefix, which is an IP address and
some indication of the length of the mask. Length means the number of leftmost contiguous mask bits that are set to one. So network 172.16.0.0
255.255.0.0 can be represented as 172.16.0.0/16. CIDR also depicts a more
hierarchical Internet architecture, where each domain takes its IP addresses
from a higher level. This allows for the summarization of the domains to be
done at the higher level. For example, if an ISP owns network 172.16.0.0/16,
then the ISP can offer 172.16.1.0/24, 172.16.2.0/24, and so on to customers.
Yet, when advertising to other providers, the ISP only needs to advertise
172.16.0.0/16

CIDR uses VLSM (Variable Lenght Subnet Masks) to allocate IP addresses to

subnetworks according to need rather than class. VLSM allows for subnets to
be further divided or subnetted into even smaller subnets. Simply, VLSM is
just subnetting a subnet.
With CIDR, address classes (Class A, B, and C) became meaningless. The
network address was no longer determined by the value of the first octet, but
assigned prefix length (subnet mask) address space. The number of hosts on
a network, could now be assigned a specific prefix depending upon the
number of hosts needed for that network.
Propagating CIDR supernets or VLSM subnets require a classless Routing
Protocols . A classless routing protocol includes the subnet mask along with
the network address in the routing update.
Conclusion-

CIDR is technique to reduce the number of routing table enties when

supernetting is use.It is used to allocate and specify the Internet addresses
and is a way to aggregate multiple Internet addresses of the same class.
CIDR also depicts a more hierarchical Internet architecture, where each
domain takes its IP addresses from a higher level.