IPv4 Multinetting

IP multinetting refers to having multiple IP networks on the same bridging domain (or VLAN). The hosts connected to the same physical segment can belong to any one of the networks, so multiple subnets can overlap onto the same physical segment. Any routing between the hosts in different networks is done through the router interface. Typically, different IP networks are on different physical segments, but IP multinetting does not require this.

Multinetting can be a critical element in a transition strategy, allowing a legacy assignment of IP addresses to coexist with newly configured hosts. However, because of the additional constraints introduced in troubleshooting and bandwidth, Extreme Networks recommends that you use multinetting as a transitional tactic only, and not as a long-term network design strategy.

Multinetting in ExtremeXOS does not require that you create a dummy multinetting protocol, and does not require that you create VLANs for each IP network. This implementation does not require you to explicitly enable IP multinetting. Multinetting is automatically enabled when a secondary IP address is assigned to a VLAN.