help on network design and configuration

i have been given a block of ip 203.167.x.x /27 what i want to achieve is to split this up into 6 subnets of /29 each subnet,. does this make sense and how do i go about implementing this. I have a as5300 with 4 e1 port, 1 ethernet, 1 fast ethernet ports and two 3com superstack II switch 1000. i would like any suggestions or ideas from experts out there. thanks!!

Basically, here is one way to do it. Since you supplied 203.167.x.x, I can't give you the exact answer but its pretty easy to figure out. A /27 subnet has 32 available address bits. So, as an example I will assume you were given 203.167.50.32/27. You have a range from 203.167.50.32 - 203.167.50.63 to work with. Now, if you want to get 6 subnetworks like you said, you can not use /29 because that will only give you 4 networks in the 32 bit range you have to work with:

203.167.50.32/29
203.167.50.32 --> 39
203.167.50.40 --> 47
203.167.50.48 --> 55
203.167.50.56 --> 63

Since you want 6 networks, you would have to use all but two bits or /30:
203.167.50.32/30
203.167.50.32 --> 35
203.167.50.36 --> 39
203.167.50.40 --> 43
203.167.50.44 --> 47
203.167.50.48 --> 51
203.167.50.52 --> 55
203.167.50.56 --> 59
203.167.50.60 --> 63

The bad part is the fact that you only get 2 hosts per network. But, you didn't specify how many hosts you needed... just that you needed 6 networks. I suppose you could get crazy and use a combination of /29 and /30 but I'll leave that up to you.

Drizzle

Thank you for your reply Drizzle, i would go for the /29 having 4 networks...if you don't mind i have another question for anyone out there reading this thread. if i were to enable vlan for this network, with the given equipment like the cisco as5300 and 3com switch 1000 could anyone kindly point me to a link where i could do further reading. thanks again!

If you are looking for general VLAN knowledge and/or VLAN theories, you've come to the right place. The menu at the top named "Networking" has some great information on VLANs.

I would start here:
www.firewall.cx/vlans-intro.php

Well, that is where I did start when I didn't know a think about networking.

As long as you use open standards, you should be good to go with VLANs. Stay away from Cisco (or any vendor) specific protocols because you can run circles trying to get different hardware/software to play nicely.