Number of Hosts to put on a broadcast segment.

[mbroberson1]

Hi all,

Just curious for you opinions on this.

By a best design and for performance what is a general rule of thumb as the number of hosts to have on a L2 broadcast segment?

For example, your typical network with numerous vlans. Say you have all /24's for your vlans. What is the percentage of hosts you will actually typically want to put on the segment. We know you can address up to 254 hosts addresses.

I have heard before a good rule is to top off around 50% to 60% of the total addresses available. I know there are many factors and variables involved such as broadcast generated and un-known unicast, multicasts, etc...

Thanks,

Brandon

[Collin Clark]

/24's are a smart way to go. We run 200-220 per subnet with Windows clients, which is pretty typical. You can put more linux hosts per subnet, but I don't see much of a benefit in doing so.