Just noticed that out Cox internet WAN IP assignment has been switched to a class B network with an assignment of 255.255.248.0 - which is known to be lower quality than class A. Any particular reason for this? It’s been like this for a few weeks, even after modem resets.
It's actually a CIDR (Classless Inter Domain Routing) mask. Way back when, classful networks were doled out on the byte boundary, e.g. 255.0.0.0 (Class A), 255.255.0.0 (Class B), 255.255.255.0 (Class C) but as the number of autonomous networks grew on the internet, there was a need to segment those networks further and that's where this comes in.
255.255.248.0 is also known as a /21 (meaning there's 21 bits in the network portion of the address). It contains 8 "Class C" aka /24 subnets.
All this is to say, it's just a larger subnet that Cox has segmented for your particular area or concentrator. It has no bearing on performance aside from being in a larger broadcast domain (but broadcasts are probably restricted in someway on the network between devices anyway).
Do you think it would lead to less IP changes? A bigger subnet = a larger DHCP pool? Thank you for your very technical input!
I believe Cox has always been a Class B. There are fewer than 10 commercial Class A and Cox wouldn't be one.
Class b vs class a has nothing to do with network quality, it's simply the number of IP addresses in the block. B has fewer than A, I would think B is better due to fewer ip addresses having to be handled by the route.
I wonder if this means Cox is running out of IPv4 addresses. I hope they don't switch to CGNAT with DOCSIS 4.0.
Nah, they ain't running out, they probably shifter a group from one area to another. That's why I ALWAYS tell people, that services that are trying to use IP Geolocation, are doing them a mis-service, since geolocation is only 70 - 80% accurate due to ISP's always transferring groups from one area to another.
