After days of research to find the answer to a simple question, I finally figured out the purpose of a subnet mask.
On a computer the host has an ip address usually 192.168.1.1 or something similar (10.1.1.1) which is the identifier for the router to see in your house.
Part of that ip address identifies the "network id". The subnet mask uses the 255 number to show which part of your ip address is actually the network id part.
You have two computers: 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2
You can imagine the part that is changing is unique to the two devices while the network part is unchanging because both of your computers are connected to the same router.
The subnet mask would be 255.255.255.0 and the network id is 192.168.1 and the host id is 1.
host id = computer or whatever device
network id = identification number for the network all your devices are on locally
So if you have 1000 computers and one router. Your subnet mask would need to be different because the ip address changing would also involve the next to last place in the ip address for example: 192.168.1.254 (computer number 254) and 192.168.2.0 (computer number 255). the ip address slots can only go up to 255 (but you can't use 255 for the last slot for host id) so after computer number 254 the next to last number would need to increase by 1 and the last number starts counting from 1 to 254 (only the last number has the rule of not using 0 or 255)
subnet mask: 255.255.0.0
network id: 192.168
host id (computer): 1.254 and 2.1 (in this example)
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please comment and ask questions and ill try to answer, if i don't know the answer i will try to get the answer or post another blog to answer it.
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this is not a rot13 number for where you can download a nice book to help you understand
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