What does the slash mean in an IP address?

Question

What does the slash mean in an IP address?

In: 53

Answer 1

It denotes a subnet.

Here’s the long and short of it. Your IP is like a house address for your computer. If the IP address tells other computers **where** you live, the subnet or “/“ tells you/other computers the maximum amount of houses that can fit on your street (how many computers can fit on the network).

It would be too complicated to go super into detail but basically

/24 = 254 total computers allowed (most common)

/23 = 510 total computers allowed

/22 = 1022 total computers allowed

/21 = 2046 total computers allowed

And so on.

You can see it multiplies by 2 each time. This is intended because it uses binary to calculate (which exponentially increases.)

Source: Network Engineer