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I'm learning to subnet and I'm constantly doing exercises on paper about this topic. I'm trying to breakdown a network into smaller subnets, given the number of hosts for each one. For now, I only know to do it with hosts, routers and communications subnets between them.

In the meanwhile, I'm also studying the basic components of a network, but I don't know which is the behaviour of the elements in the title when I try to subnet a network with them.

For example, I know that each subnet has one or more gateways and I know that I have to assign an IP address to each of the routers' interfaces that link a subnet; but what's the behaviour of the elements in the title? Should I assign them an IP, even if they don't work at Layer 3 actually? How can I address each of those component in a pratical exercise?

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Hubs and repeaters are layer-1 devices, basically powered cables, that have no addressing.

Bridges and switches work at layer-2, and they do not need network addressing to function. Unmanaged bridges or switches do not have network addresses. Managed bridges or switches may have network addresses in order to connect to them for management, but those addresses play no part in layer-2 switching.

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You dont assign Ip addresses to hubs, hubs only "forwards" the frames received to the rest of the ports, switches can have an ip addess if you either want to manage it and be able to log in to by ssh or telnet, if you define a vlan on them, or if it is a layer 3 switch and you want it to do routing, exists a concept of svi( switch virtual interface) , I will suggest for you to study how switching works , hubs, routers, layer 2 and layer 3 behaviour , you can study this on the network +, or the ccent

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You don't have to assign IP address to the devices that operate on or below layer 2 of the OSI model. However, you might have to assign IP to the switch, but that would be solely for the management and configuration purposes. Hope this helps!

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