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I was wondering if the router will always take the first valid host addresses in a subnet?

All of the examples online and book seems to have the router take the first valid host addresses of a subnet.

An example is class C /26.

With subnets of .0,.64,.128 Where the router would have a default gateway of: .1,.65,.129

Thank you in advance.

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The router/gateway does not need to be the first valid address in a subnet, no. But it has to use something and by convention its the first (or occasionally the last) available IP address in the range. After all, why make things more difficult than they have to be?

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    Moving away from this convention is considered unorthodox and can lead to confusion in the future. One example on a wider scale of things is the situation I'm in at the company I work at, where three ISPs merged, two of which use x.x.x.1 as the gateway and the third uses x.x.x.254 as the gateway. This has a caused a great number of sync-no-surf issues where both installation and support reps from either company get confused and use the wrong gateway while working on a router config.
    – MaQleod
    Jun 5, 2011 at 5:27
  • @maqleod - absolutely see why that would cause trouble. I think that people should follow the convention whenever they can but the most important thing is whatever you do, be consistent
    – Rob Moir
    Jun 5, 2011 at 6:18
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As Robert stated in his answer, the router can be assigned any valid ip address in the subnet but the convention has been to use the first, or occasionally, the last valid ip address.

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  • You should add something to this answer, right now it's just a paraphrasing of Robert's answer.
    – crazy2be
    Jun 5, 2011 at 3:58

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