What does the slash mean in an IP address?

Question

What does the slash mean in an IP address?

In: 53

Answer 1

It’s used to identify how many other IP addresses are in that group of IPs. A slash 24 says that all IP addresses that have the same first 24 bits are in the same broadcast group. Note: An IP (v4) address has 4 blocks of numbers, separated by a dot(.). Each of these numbers represents 8 bits. For instance 255 means 11111111. So your example of 255.255.0.0/24 says that the first 24 bits must me 11111111.11111111.00000000, then the last 8 bits can be whatever else (mostly).