A network engineer carves a subnet of 192.168.44.0/26 for a set of application servers in Azure. How many addresses can be assigned to resources in that subnet?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
A /26 contains 64 addresses in total. Azure keeps five of them for its own use in every subnet: the first four addresses and the last address in the range. That leaves 59 addresses that can be assigned to virtual machines, network interfaces and other resources. Those reservations apply regardless of prefix size, so smaller subnets lose the same five addresses.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. 62 assumes only the classic network and broadcast addresses are reserved. Azure reserves five addresses per subnet, so two more are unavailable here.
- C. 64 is the raw size of a /26 block, which ignores the reservations Azure makes in every subnet. Reserved addresses cannot be assigned to resources.
- D. 58 subtracts one address too many. Azure reserves exactly five addresses in each subnet, not six, so the usable count is 59.