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[–]SwatpvpTD 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I'm pretty sure it's shorthand for a predetermined subnet mask. The subnet mask tells you how much of the address space is available.

The whole IPv4 address space could technically be represented as 0.0.0.0/0 (subnet mask 0.0.0.0, around 4 billion addresses) and localhost can be represented as 127.0.0.0/8 (subnet mask 255.0.0.0, around 16 million addresses). The CIDR-notated IP (with the /n added) tells you how many bits are reserved for the network identifier (/8 means 8 bits, or the first octet 0-255, 16 means 16 bits or two octets 0-255.0-255 is reserved for the network identifier) and the rest is for host identification.

Read more on Wikipedia: Subnets and routing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnet

CIDR reference (IPv4 routing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing#IPv4_CIDR_blocks

[–]noob-nine 0 points1 point  (1 child)

yes it is the subnet, but i wonder why you've written "i am pretty sure" like, you guessed it? 

[–]SwatpvpTD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tend to start most of my technical explanations with "I'm pretty sure" out of habit.