Aim : To study Class-less inter domain routing (CIDR).

Theory :
CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing, sometimes known as supernetting) is a way to
allocate and specify the Internet addresses used in inter-domain routing more flexibly than with the
original system of Internet Protocol (IP) address classes.
CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing, sometimes known as supernetting) is a way to allocate and
specify the Internet addresses used in inter-domain routing more flexibly than with the original
system of Internet Protocol (IP) address classes. As a result, the number of available Internet
addresses has been greatly increased. CIDR is now the routing system used by virtually all gateway
hosts on the Internet's backbone network. The Internet's regulating authorities now expect every
Internet service provider to use it for routing.
The original Internet Protocol defines IP adresses in four major classes of address structure, Classes
A through D. Each of these classes allocates one portion of the 32-bit Internet address format to a
network address and the remaining portion to the specific host machines within the network
specified by the address. One of the most commonly used classes is (or was) Class B, which
allocates space for up to 65,533 host addresses. A company who needed more than 254 host
machines but far fewer than the 65,533 host addresses possible would essentially be "wasting" most
of the block of addresses allocated. For this reason, the Internet was, until the arrival of CIDR,
running out of address space much more quickly than necessary. CIDR effectively solved the
problem by providing a new and more flexible way to specify network addresses in routers. (With a
new version of the Internet Protocol - IPv6 - a 128-bit address is possible, greatly expanding the
number of possible addresses on the Internet. However, it will be some time before IPv6 is in
widespread use.)
Using CIDR, each IP address has a network prefix that identifies either an aggregation of network
gateways or an individual gateway. The length of the network prefix is also specified as part of the
IP address and varies depending on the number of bits that are needed (rather than any arbitrary
class assignment structure). A destination IP address or route that describes many possible
destinations has a shorter prefix and is said to be less specific. A longer prefix describes a
destination gateway more specifically. Routers are required to use the most specific or longest
network prefix in the routing table when forwarding packets.
A CIDR network address looks like this:
192.30.250.00/18

The "192.30.250.00" is the network address itself and the "18" says that the first 18 bits are the
network part of the address, leaving the last 14 bits for specific host addresses. CIDR lets one
routing table entry represent an aggregation of networks that exist in the forward path that don't
need to be specified on that particular gateway, much as the public telephone system uses area
codes to channel calls toward a certain part of the network. This aggregation of networks in a single
address is sometimes referred to as a supernet.
CIDR is supported by the Border Gateway Protocol, the prevailing exterior (interdomain) gateway
protocol. (The older exterior or interdomain gateway protocols, Exterior Gateway Protocol and
Routing Information Protocol, do not support CIDR.) CIDR is also supported by the OSPF interior
or intradomain gateway protocol.

Subnet masks :
A subnet mask is a bitmask that encodes the prefix length in quad-dotted notation: 32 bits, starting
with a number of 1 bits equal to the prefix length, ending with 0 bits, and encoded in four-part
dotted-decimal format. A subnet mask encodes the same information as a prefix length, but predates
the advent of CIDR. However, in CIDR notation, the prefix bits are always contiguous, whereas
subnet masks may specify non-contiguous bits. However, this has no practical advantage for
increasing efficiency.
CIDR is principally a bitwise, prefix-based standard for the representation of IP addresses and their
routing properties. It facilitates routing by allowing blocks of addresses to be grouped into single
routing table entries. These groups, commonly called CIDR blocks, share an initial sequence of bits

in the binary representation of their IP addresses. IPv4 CIDR blocks are identified using a syntax
similar to that of IPv4 addresses: a dotted-decimal address, followed by a slash, then a number from
0 to 32, e.g., a.b.c.d/n. The dotted decimal portion is the IPv4 address. The number following the
slash is the prefix length, the number of shared initial bits, counting from the most-significant bit of
the address. When emphasizing only the size of a network, the address portion of the notation is
usually omitted. Thus, a /20 block is a CIDR block with an unspecified 20-bit prefix.
An IP address is part of a CIDR block, and is said to match the CIDR prefix if the initial n bits of
the address and the CIDR prefix are the same. The length of an IPv4 address is 32 bits, an n-bit
CIDR prefix leaves 32-n bits unmatched, meaning that 232-n IPv4 addresses match a given n-bit
CIDR prefix. Shorter CIDR prefixes match more addresses, while longer prefixes match fewer. An
address can match multiple CIDR prefixes of different lengths.
CIDR is also used for IPv6 addresses and the syntax semantic is identical. The prefix length can
range from 0 to 128, due to the larger number of bits in the address. However, by convention a
subnet on broadcast MAC layer networks always has 64-bit host identifiers. Larger prefixes are
rarely used even on point-to-point links.

Prefix

aggregation :
CIDR provides the possibility of fine-grained routing prefix aggregation. For example, sixteen
contiguous /24 networks can be aggregated and advertised to a larger network as a single /20 route,
if the first 20 bits of their network addresses match. Two aligned contiguous /20 blocks may be
aggregated to a /19, and so forth. This results in reduction of the number of routes that have to be
advertised.

Conclusion :
Thus we have successfully studied CIDR used to assign IP addresses and route internet protocol
packets.