Talk:Broadcast address

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In the page you state that

"Generally, the broadcast address is found by taking the logical bit complement of the subnet mask and then logically ANDing this with the IP address."

and then give the example:

"This can be found from the subnet mask (255.255.0.0) and the IP address (eg. 172.16.48.196 - the complement of the subnet mask is 0.0.255.255, and 172.16.48.196 && 0.0.255.255 = 172.16.255.255."

For that calculation the last operation schould be OR and not AND.

Please take note.

[edit] Definition of broadcast address

Wouldn't it be simpler to say : "The broadcast address is an address which has all host-part bits set to 'one'" ?

Also, at least linux allows using a different broadcast address. Older linux disributions asked as part of the network setup for the broadcast address. Can someone clarify why those broadcast addresses were used/allowed ?

xerces8 --86.61.2.139 14:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)