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I have a public ip as below which is static (my isp provided) as below:

IP Address: x.x.146.50
Subnet Mask:
Default Gateway:    x.x.146.49
DNS1:   x.x.1.196
DNS2:   x.x.7.196

But what is my Network, Broadcast and DNS (this scared me for ages, looking for a easy way to do 100% accurate calculating/math).

iface eth0 inet static
    address x.x.146.50
    network ????????????
    gateway x.x.146.49
    broadcast ?????????

Follow up: (short cut)

$ ipcalculator
Address:              00001000.00001000.00001000.0000 1000
Netmask: = 28 11111111.11111111.11111111.1111 0000
Wildcard:             00000000.00000000.00000000.0000 1111
Network:           00001000.00001000.00001000.0000 0000
HostMin:              00001000.00001000.00001000.0000 0001
HostMax:             00001000.00001000.00001000.0000 1110
Broadcast:             00001000.00001000.00001000.0000 1111
Hosts/Net: 14                    Class A

1) It tells me Broadcast what to copy and paste
2) It tells me Netmask what to copy and paste
3) It tells me Network what to copy and paste

Now its Easy! i was always finding them complex in my head to do manual calculation and server is down for 20 days :P. Not not anymore.

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3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Your network is x.x.146.48 and your broadcast x.x.146.63.

Network and broadcast can be derived from ip and netmask. Netmask is used to separate the IP in two different segments (they are called network and host). If you look at your netmask in binary it looks like:


The ones mark the network segment, the zeros the host. You IP in binary is (I'm not going to translate the 146 as it is fully part of the network address):


From the netmask we know the last four digits is you host address, so your networks is.

x.x.146.0011-0000 or 48

The broadcast address is the same that the network one but with all the host bits at 1.

x.x.146.0011-1111 or 63

You can found much more info about ip routing and subnets in wikipedia.

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Thank you its working. See my edit with my calculation i was confused, but your hints was excellent thanks a lot. –  YumYumYum Jan 5 '12 at 20:26

You don't need network and broadcast. It is for hosting a lan. As you connect directly to the ISP you need only gateway, address, netmask. I connect to my ISP the same way. You need to write the dns to the /etc/resolv.conf

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Sometimes it get automatically two lines in that file. But to explicity add more, you can add as much as you want right :)! –  YumYumYum Jan 5 '12 at 20:28

Just use the NetworkManager GUI. I don't think you're quite ready to handle the Debian-style configurations in /etc.

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Please see the edit, i did that. –  YumYumYum Jan 5 '12 at 20:26

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