Technical Library

Due to the recent explosion in Internet connectivity and the exponential growth of the routing tables across the global-Internet, a new method of address space assignment is being used to reduce the size of the global routing table.

The InterNIC assigns contiguous blocks of 255 Class C networks to Internet Service Providers. All the addresses within each CIDR block are routed to the appropriate service provider. The providers are then responsible for routing the network to appropriate destinations within their backbone. This effectively collapses a block of 255 networks (or multiple blocks of 255 networks) into one routing entry across the global Internet.

For example, we own the CIDR block 206.232.0.0/15 (or 206.232.0.0 255.254.0.0). This means that all the networks that start with 11001110 1110100 as its first 15 bits are routed to us. In dotted notations this equates to 206.232.0.0 - 206.233.255.0.

We also own the Class A network 38.0.0.0/8. We are currently assigning customers 24 bit subnets of this network. This entire network is routed with one routing entry. One Class A network contains 65,534 24 bit subnets.