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The HR department then hands the letter over to Tom. As a result, the letter is sent to the HR department instead of Tom. On receiving Davis’s letter, the team identifies that Tom works in the HR department. The administrative team at Tom’s office sorts the mail by department rather than by employee name to ensure that the correspondence isn’t missed and there is no confusion in the process. Tom’s place of employment is a large enterprise with several co-located departments. Davis sends this letter to Tom’s office rather than his residence. Suppose a user named ‘Davis’ writes a letter to his friend ‘Tom’. Let’s consider an analogy to understand the subnet mask concept better. However, the routers match this destination IP address to the data packet’s subnet mask to deliver the data packet to the right place. Data packets that traverse over the internet or any network do not indicate the subnet mask but only reveal the IP address of the destination. Routing devices or switches rely on subnet masks to route data packets to suitable destinations. Technically, subnet masks are used internally within a network. It encapsulates a range of IP addresses that a subnet can use, wherein the subnet refers to a smaller network within a more extensive network. A subnet mask is a 32-bit address that segregates an IP address into network bits that identify the network and host bits that identify the host device operating on that network.
