Segmentation

Discontiguous masks are something that is going to be somewhat historic within the network design toolbox. It is basically a methodology of looking at particular bits of a network/host definition. The big thing to recall is that as a packet crosses a network device it does so within a packet. The packet is nothing more than a stream of bits. Within the packet header there are bits that define the source network address and the destination network address. This is where discontiguous masks come into play. With a system that can leverage discontiguous masks, you can access information about any part of the network bits, not just starting reading and then stopping (or vice versa) when you look at a bit boundry masking only.