scottsee wrote:
This was a troubleshooting situation I had last night. They are all on the /27 now, my question is why the switches were even communicating between /27 and /28 subnet masking..
I'm confused. If all the interfaces have a /27 mask where are you getting a /28 from? Or did you have them different last night but you've now corrected it?
scottsee wrote:
It's a weird scenario, I don't fully understand the problem, this is just what I can work out is happening.
I replicated the issue this morning by erasing the NVRAM on all 3 switches, and no configuration exist outside of just the vlan1 ip address/subnetting.
3 switches physical connected to each other, switch 1 & 2 on the /27 subnet and switch 3 on the /28 subnet.
host 10.1.1.10 /27 has a network address bit of .0, host bits of .1 - .31, and broadcast of 32.
host 10.1.1.20 /27 has a network address bit of .0, host bits of .1 - .31, and broadcast of 32.
host 10.1.1.30 /28 has a network address bit of .16, host bits of .17 - 30, and broadcast address of .31.
A little error here. .31 is the broadcast on a /27. .32 is going to be the network address of the next subnet.
And if I may nitpick, your use of terminology is a bit awkward here. I would say "the subnetwork bits are all set to 0" as opposed to saying "the network bit is set to .0". In this case, using the class c private range, you have a network of the first 24 bits, a
subnet of 3 bits (due to the /27) and a 5 host bits.
Of course, that's assuming things are classful, which they are not, so it's all wrong anyway. Now it's just 27 bits for the network, and 5 for the host. There is no such thing a classes anymore and referring to them is incorrect.
scottsee wrote:
- When 10.1.1.10 /27 & 10.1.1.30 /28 try to communicate they can't because the don't share the same network bit
- When 10.1.1.10 /27 & 10.1.1.20 /27 everything works as expected
- When 10.1.1.20 /27 and 10.1.10.30 /28 try to communicate they can because .20 and .30 share the same .16 network bit on the /28 network. That's the only conclusion I can come to.
I think that's right, right?

After reading this a few times, and changing my reply... I think you might have the right idea, you're just expressing it the wrong way.
It's not that they share the same "network bit", it's the switch 3 thinks that switch 2 is in the same subnet and that switch 1 is in a remote subnet.
switch 2 - 10.1.1.20/27 which means switch 2 thinks that addresses 10.1.1.1 - 10.1.1.30 are valid host addresses in its local subent.
switch 3 - 10.1.1.30/28 which means that switch 3 thinks that addresses 10.1.1.17 - 10.1.1.30 are valid host addresses in its local subnet.
When hosts are communicating on their local subnet they will ARP to get the layer two address, and then send the packet. If a host wants to communicate with another host that is not on its local subnet it needs to use its default gateway. If you have not configured a default gateway on switch 3 then it it needs to send a packet to a host not on its local subnet (it will think 10.1.1.10 is NOT local) then it will drop the packet because it has no way to reach it.
Does that make sense?