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IP address classes provide a simple method to distinguish local hosts from remote hosts and to determine the route to a remote host.

However, the method allows very little variation in network size, which led to problems such as assigning inappropriate IP addresses.

To work around these limitations, a method called Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) was developed to divide networks into a number of networks of different sizes.

In this section, you will learn about the limitations of class-based IP addressing and the advantages of using CIDR.