Editing Supernetwork (section)

==Examples==
A company that operates 150 accounting services in each of 50 districts has a router in each office connected with a [[Frame Relay]] link to its corporate headquarters. Without supernetting, the routing table on any given router might have to account for 150 routers in each of the 50 districts, or 7500 different networks. However, if a hierarchical addressing system is implemented with supernetting, then each district has a centralized site as an interconnection point. Each route is summarized before being advertised to other districts. Each router now only recognizes its own subnet and the other 49 summarized routes.

The determination of the summary route on a router involves the recognition of the number of highest-order bits that match all addresses. The summary route is calculated as follows. A router has the following networks in its routing table:
<pre>
 192.168.98.0
 192.168.99.0
 192.168.100.0
 192.168.101.0
 192.168.102.0
 192.168.105.0
</pre>

Firstly, the addresses are converted to binary format and aligned in a list:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Address
! First Octet
! Second Octet
! Third Octet
! Fourth Octet
|-
| 192.168.98.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0010
| 00000000
|-
| 192.168.99.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0011
| 00000000
|-
| 192.168.100.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0100
| 00000000
|-
| 192.168.101.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0101
| 00000000
|-
| 192.168.102.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0110
| 00000000
|-
| 192.168.105.0
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>1001
| 00000000
|}

Secondly, the bits at which the common pattern of digits ends are located. These common bits are shown in red. Lastly, the number of common bits is counted. The summary route is found by setting the remaining bits to zero, as shown below. It is followed by a slash and then the number of common bits. 

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! First Octet
! Second Octet
! Third Octet
! Fourth Octet
! Address
! Netmask
|-
| <span style="color:red;">11000000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">10101000</span>
| <span style="color:red;">0110</span>0000
| 00000000
| 192.168.96.0
| /20
|}

The summarized route is 192.168.96.0/20. The subnet mask is 255.255.240.0. This summarized route also contains networks that were not in the summarized group, namely, 192.168.96.0, 192.168.97.0, 192.168.103.0, 192.168.104.0, 192.168.106.0, 192.168.107.0, 192.168.108.0, 192.168.109.0, 192.168.110.0, and 192.168.111.0. It must be assured that the missing networks do not exist outside of this route. 

In another example, an ISP is assigned a block of [[IP address]]es by a regional Internet registry (RIR) of 172.1.0.0 to 172.1.255.255.  The ISP might then assign subnetworks to each of their downstream clients, e.g., ''Customer A'' will have the range 172.1.1.0 to 172.1.1.255, ''Customer B'' would receive the range 172.1.2.0 to 172.1.2.255 and ''Customer C'' would receive the range 172.1.3.0 to 172.1.3.255, and so on.  Instead of an entry for each of the subnets 172.1.1.x and 172.1.2.x, etc., the ISP could aggregate the entire 172.1.x.x address range and advertise the network 172.1.0.0/16, which would reduce the number of entries in the global routing table.