Took me multiple attempts and multiple weeks to get cs 1.5 running on red hat around 2000. I still remember searching and downloading random rpms online. If I'm not mistaken the website was called meatsource or something like that.
Anyway, we have come a long way since then but the inner workings are the same.
Lemme try: an IP is the address of your computer and only a single number. If you want to group clients you have to define a way to separate these 32bit number into a part that defines the group and a part that defines the number of the client in that group. That's what the netmask is for. Example:
IP: 10.0.0.1
Netmask: 255.255.0.0
In binary this gets more clear:
IP: 0000 1001.0000 0000.0000 0000.0000 0001
Netmask: 1111 1111.1111 1111.0000 0000.0000 0000
The netmask is always a bunch of 1 first, then 0 until you got 32 of it. 1 define the parts of the IP that define the group, 0 the client.
10.0 is the group, 0.1 is the number of the client in our example. All clients which IP begin with 10.0 are in the same group and can talk to each other without needing a router.
A subnet is defined by its netmask. Classes are useless nowadays IMHO.
At least for me they created more confusion than anything else. Why are there classes if the netmask defines the subnet size? Because there was a time before netmasks, just ignore them
Class A/B/C in networking. I always wondered why there were classes if you would use a subnetmask regardless.
Took me a while to realize that class notation was only used before sub netmasks were a thing. The best you could do is to ignore them completely.
Networking is a wonderful field where you think you understand it until you look at the parts and realize you had it all wrong.
What does that have to do with Wikipedia specifically?This isn't a problem of wikipedia it's a problem of capitalism