What is the purpose of network address?

Generally this network address 192.168.1.0/24 has total 254 usable hosts that means network 192.169.1.0/24 is representing total 254 hosts if any another networks want to communicate to this 254 host . Route entry is configured with as destination as 192.168 .1.0 so traffic will route to all 254 hosts if not we have to write 254 route entries which make big challenge to implement even small network.network address is always logically network segmentation can be accomplished by dividing supernet in further smalls network addresses for example network address 10.225.0.0/19 supernet can further divide this network into various segmentation by creating subsets of supernet address . . It is a numeric/symbolic address that is assigned to any device that allows access to or is part of a network.

You can think of the network ID as the "neighborhood". Then think of the host IP addresses as the "house numbers". The subnet mask helps define the network ID.

From a big picture perspective, consider this classful address: Network ID: 192.168.0.0 Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 (I realize that 192.168.0.0 isn't a common example, but it is valid and helps illustrate the point.)

Valid host IP addresses in the "neighborhood" for the "house numbers" are: 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.254 The network ID is 192.168.0.0 The broadcast address is 192.168.0.255

Here's what is looks like if this is not a classful address: Network ID: 192.168.0.0 Subnet mask: 255.255.0.0

Valid host IP addresses in the "neighborhood" for the "house numbers" are: 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.255.254 The network ID is 192.168.0.0 The broadcast address is 192.168.0.255

Notice that in both of these examples, the network ID (without the subnet mask) looks the same. However, the subnet mask defines them with two completely different host IP address ranges.

Using your original analogy, you can divide the neighborhood into streets with subnetting. For example, starting with 192.168.0.0 and 255.255.255.0, you can divide it into two subnets:

Subnet 1 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.128 Host IP address range: 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.126 Broadcast IP: 192.168.0.127

Subnet 2 192.168.0.128 255.255.255.128 Host IP address range: 192.168.0.129 through 192.168.0.254 Broadcast IP: 192.168.0.255

For the sake of basic understanding, network address is used for identifying a network, just like a group name identifies a group. In the example you took 192.168.1.0/24, the network address 192.168.1.0 is taken as a name for the group comprising of IP addresses from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254.

So if the router needs to find where, for example, IP 192.168.1.24 exists, it will search for its IP pool name (i.e network address) 192.168.1.0/24 and not the individual IP addresses. This is the reason why network address in not assigned to a particular machine.

Networks are divided into subnetworks mainly for the following reason. There is a concept called the public IP and private IP space in IPV4.

for an organisation to communicate with outside world it should have public IP , we cannot afford to have public IP for each and every system in our org. so to overcome this we have used subnetting

also used for security reasons. basically to custom restrict the access between a set of users

This is just a broader view :)

The use of "0" in a IP addresss was defined in RFC923 and carried over in successive RFCs:

Special Addresses:

  In certain contexts, it is useful to have fixed addresses with
  functional significance rather than as identifiers of specific
  hosts.  When such usage is called for, the address zero is to be
  interpreted as meaning "this", as in "this network".  The address
  of all ones are to be interpreted as meaning "all", as in "all
  hosts".  For example, the address 128.9.255.255 could be
  interpreted as meaning all hosts on the network 128.9.  Or, the
  address 0.0.0.37 could be interpreted as meaning host 37 on this
  network.

This example provides for a specific host on the current network (0.0.0.37) by using 0's in the network portions of the address, but it doesn't actually clarify the opposite case (0's in the host portion of the address). However as it did define "0" as "this."

From there, I haven't been able to find any documentation to back up my memory, but in RFC1060 the address "0.0.0.0" was clearly documented as "this host on this network":

     (a)   {0, 0}

        This host on this network.  Can only be used as a source
        address (see note later).

Since all zeroes for the host part of the address meant "this host," it is unusable as a host address on the network.

Logically, a network was referenced by using the "network" portion of the address followed by all zeros (i.e. no host bits in use). I can't find documentation to back up my memory but I believe that this was widely accepted long before RFC1060.

Edit: Thanks to Ricky's mention of RFC919, I found the reference I had been looking for that illustrates what I recall about the general acceptance of the network address:

However, as a notational convention, we refer to
networks (as opposed to hosts) by using addresses with zero fields.
For example, 36.0.0.0 means "network number 36"

---

As an aside, touching on Ricky's mention of subnet-zero and the all-ones subnet, I believe the first documentation of that comes from RFC950 which references RFC943 (which obsoleted RFC923 above but uses the same language for special addresses):

     It is useful to preserve and extend the interpretation of these
     special addresses in subnetted networks.  This means the values
     of all zeros and all ones in the subnet field should not be
     assigned to actual (physical) subnets.

        In the example above, the 6-bit wide subnet field may have
        any value except 0 and 63.

     Please note that there is no effect or new restriction on the
     addresses of hosts on non-subnetted networks.

You never can count anything by 0.Host ID one kinds of counting .so Host ID start by 1 .

192.168.1.0/24 this expression use for router .

It means,

Subnet Mask:255.255.255.0

Network :192.168.1.0

Broadcast :192.168.1.255

Thanks.

It is used for routing purposes. When a router is told to route packets from sub-network A to sub-network B, the network address is used by the router to indicate the source and destination sub-networks as a whole.

Also there would be no way to distinguish a specific node on the sub-network from the entire subnet if we assigned a device to the network address but I believe the true purpose the the routing factor, I may be mistaken though.

further reading: http://www.techexams.net/forums/network/90005-purpose-network-id-broadcast-id.html