Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Guide to Master Your Certification!

The primary use of a subnet mask is to determine the IPv4 address range of the local network. A subnet mask works in conjunction with an IP address to identify which part of the address is the network portion and which part is the host portion. This segmentation allows devices within the same subnet to communicate directly with each other while also understanding how to route traffic to different networks.

Each subnet can host a specific number of IP addresses, and the subnet mask helps define that range by indicating how many bits of the IP address are allocated for the network versus the host. This is essential for efficient network management and allows for the organization of networks into smaller, more manageable pieces.

In contrast, assigning static IP addresses is a different process that involves manually setting an IP address for a device, which does not involve the subnet mask directly. Managing bandwidth allocation pertains to Quality of Service (QoS) settings and traffic management rather than the function of a subnet mask. Finally, data encryption deals with securing data transmission and is unrelated to the creation or interpretation of subnets.