Hello - I have now posted the question and screenshot

I just want to say hi. I've been browsing a little bit since I just joined today and like a lot of people I will need a bit of help with my subnetting. I'm taking the last class of the 4 ccna courses and well, I took the first class so long ago that now I can't remember it. I do have a specifc question but I rather get a screenshot of that diagram in packet tracer with the information on it to make it easier to ask the question. Other than that, I'm just glad I found a site I can ask this type of questions. Anyway, great site and I'll be reading more as time goes on I'm sure. Oh by the way, I like the subtle colors on your forum, my eyes don't hurt.

This is a handout I got in class when it started. My question is, what's the best way to approach this. I figured out how to get the hosts. At least I think I got that right, but I've been getting stuck on how to get each set of IP's for each vlan since I have a huge range to go with. I think this is why I'm confused since a class C is much smaller in terms of the IP's I can use.

I know this is a class A ip address, but I'm not sure how to continue from here. Or I'm I even looking at this correctly. I've put everything on the screenshot that I'm looking at to give you guys a better idea of what I mean. I hope this makes sense. I just want to understand this. This was due a while back so I don't care about that part anymore, I would like to just understand how to do the subnetting part at this point. I have read the sticky subnetting, and have also re-read the cisco subnetting and the chapter subnetting. Unfortunately I'm still getting stuck but I think it may just be how I'm looking at this or not looking at it. Well, I was just looking for the file attachment, are we allowed to attach a screenshot? Thanks.

I put it here for now... picasaweb.google.com/jaimenow/Networking#5403269289670435554

You could post your packet tracer (pkt) file to give us a better idea. And we'll try to help. Subnetting is never straight forward in the first time. First, here is our alternative menu:

www.firewall.cx/modules.php?name=Alternative_Menu

Check the "IP Subnetting" section. Second, Here is an informative post on subnetting from some of the members:

www.firewall.cx/ftopict-2145.html
www.firewall.cx/ftopict-2823.html

Thank you for those links. I did read the last two, but the alternate I had not seen. In any case you can also zoom into that image I posted, that's probably why you couldn't see it. There's an option on the right hand side you can zoom into and it looks perfect as if you had the sheet on your hands. I just copied the handout to the packet tracer to make it easier to see. I don't have anything else on it.

Now, I just need to figure out this problem and I think everything else will make sense to me, that's why I'm posting this one since all the rest are pretty similar to this one.

So far the ip is 10.0.0.0/ 8
The eight I know it's just eight bits which is what a class A uses in a subnet 255.0.0.0 even though it's not given on that sheet.

If you look on the image I posted, I just went ahead and figured out the bits for each vlan with the 2^n-2 formula since those were given. So I got that part correct I think. But I may have jump ahead on this one since I may need to be looking at the subnet in order to figure out how many networks are needed which is usually what is asked for. I know here they already give me five so that's why I just went ahead and did that. This is part of my confusion.

If the previous steps are wrong I'm thinking that I need to look at my ip like this:

Going by this 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 - this part is just for me to check things I don't have enough practice so I just write it down.

10.0.0.0 = 11111010.00000000.00000000.00000000
255..0.0.0 = 11111111.00000000.00000000.00000000

I need 5 subnets so I do 2^3=8 networks so this is 3 more than the 5 vlans I need.
So my subnet becomes...11111111.11100000.00000000.00000000. I borrowed 3 bits. So now for the hosts I have 2^21= 2,097,152 hosts for the rest of this subnet.

So I'll leave this at this for now so maybe someone can correct me. As you can see, as far as see, I can go two ways to do this, but from this second one, since the number is extremely high I think it's more confusing for me to get to the next step which, I just hope this illustrates my confusion at least. I also read this subnetting from cisco and was trying to use their example for finding the ip ranges and subnets but they use the Class C which doesn't clear this for me.
cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_...186a00800a67f5.shtml
I think I may just be confusing myself way too much.