Can the 700 Series handle classless IP addressing?
If you select Routing Information Protocol (RIP) version 1, the classful subnet mask is used in order to create the related route since this is not provided in the RIP version 1 packet. But, if you use RIP version 2, the subnet mask is available and the related route does not need to be classful, so it is based entirely on the subnet mask in the RIP version 2 packet. In order to route a given packet, the Cisco 700 uses the destination IP address and looks up the routing table for a route that matches the full 32 bits in the destination address. If it does not find a route that matches, it uses the most significant 31 bits in the destination and continues until the most significant 1 bit in the destination. It does not assume a fixed or classful subnet mask in this look-up, so it can handle the classless situation. But, it still needs to have the route that matches the destination before it knows to which interface to send the packet. If you set up the LAN profile to use an IP address o
