A manufacturing site has 60 point-to-point router links, 12 server VLANs needing about 40 hosts each, and a tight /22 enterprise allocation with audit pressure to reduce waste. Growth on links is minimal but servers may double. Which VLSM planning approach should the designer use to avoid address waste on links?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Different link sizes deserve different containers, and you're sizing well. Matching mask to need keeps tiny WAN links from hogging space, with right-sizing as your savings lever.
Full Explanation
VLSM conserves addresses by matching prefix length to host count, so point-to-point links receive only two usable addresses while server segments receive enough for current hosts plus planned growth, preserving the limited /22. Uniform /24 subnets for links and servers waste more than 250 addresses per point-to-point link and exhaust the allocation quickly despite operational consistency. Reversing the sizes starves servers while oversizing links, causing server growth failures and continued waste on infrastructure that needs no growth. Assigning public addresses to internal links does not fix sizing waste and introduces security and allocation policy problems without addressing VLSM efficiency. Exam caveat: associate /30 or /31 style small subnets with point-to-point links and larger subnets with host VLANs plus growth. Practical check: tabulate hosts, growth, and mask per segment to prove the /22 holds with spare.