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From MicrosoftDocs with language altered to make it more concise

Summary

When you configure the TCP/IP protocol on a networked device, the TCP/IP configuration settings require:

An IP address

A subnet mask

A default gateway

To configure TCP/IP correctly, it's necessary to understand how TCP/IP networks are addressed and divided into networks and subnetworks.

IP addresses: Networks and hosts

An IP address is a 32-bit number. It uniquely identifies a host (computer or other device, such as a printer or router) on a TCP/IP network.

IP addresses are normally expressed in dotted-decimal format, with four numbers separated by periods, such as 192.168.123.132. To understand how subnet masks are used to distinguish between hosts, networks, and subnetworks, examine an IP address in binary notation.

For educational purposes only. You will not need to know this in most settings

For example, the dotted-decimal IP address 192.168.123.132 is (in binary notation) the 32-bit number 110000000101000111101110000100. This number may be hard to make sense of, so divide it into four parts of eight binary digits.

These 8-bit sections are known as octets. The example IP address, then, becomes 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100. This number only makes a little more sense, so for most uses, convert the binary address into dotted-decimal format (192.168.123.132). The decimal numbers separated by periods are the octets converted from binary to decimal notation.

For a TCP/IP wide area network (WAN) to work efficiently as a collection of networks, the routers that pass packets of data between networks don't know the exact location of a host for which a packet of information is destined. Routers only know what network the host is a member of and use information stored in their route table to determine how to get the packet to the destination host's network. After the packet is delivered to the destination's network, the packet is delivered to the appropriate host.

For this process to work, an IP address has two parts. The first part of an IP address is used as a network address, the last part as a host address. If you take the example 192.168.123.132 and divide it into these two parts, you get 192.168.123. Network .132 Host or 192.168.123.0 - network address. 0.0.0.132 - host address.

10.200.43.184

255.255.254.0

10.200.42.1

The mask defines the networks and the host by the Subnet Mask. 255 indicates that all of the numbers in this octet are locked. Using The letters (N)etwork and (H)ost it would look this...

NNN.NNN.NNN.HHH = 255 Hosts or devices

NNN.NNN.HHH.HHH =  65,534 Hosts or devices

Red is the network and green is the available IP addresses for Hosts. A Number in an octet can also be shared. this is done at Moffit to slightly increase the number of hosts.

NNN.NNN.NN[N/H].HHH

255.255.254.0

Those binary ones and zeros come into play here. With Moffitt they use 255.255.254.0 or

11111111.11111111.11111110.00000000

This allows for 510 Hosts on a single subnet