Now, that was the easy part. What if you want to specify only a small range of subnets? This is
where the block sizes come in. You have to specify the range of values in a block size. In other
words, you can’t choose to specify 20 networks. You can only specify the exact amount as the
block size value. For example, the range would have to be either 16 or 32, but not 20. Let’s say
that you want to block access to part of the network that is in the range from 172.16.8.0 through
172.16.15.0. That is a block size of 8. Your network number would be 172.16.8.0, and the
wildcard would be 0.0.7.255. Whoa! What is that? The 7.255 is what the router uses to determine
the block size. The network and wildcard tell the router to start at 172.16.8.0 and go up a block
size of eight addresses to network 172.16.15.0.
//Seriously—it really is easier than it looks—really! I could certainly go through the binary math
for you, but no one needs that. Actually, all you have to do is remember that the wildcard is
always one number less than the block size. So, in our example, the wildcard would be 7 since
our block size is 8. If you used a block size of 16, the wildcard would be 15. Easy, huh? But just
in case, we’ll go through some examples to help you nail it. The following example tells the
router to match the first three octets exactly but that the fourth octet can be anything: