Superscoping vs. Supernetting

This article briefly explains the differences between superscopes and supernetting and gives examples of when to use each.

DHCP Superscoping is used when you need to assign non-supernetted or non- consecutive IP address subnets to the same physical segment. For example, if you needed to assign 199.1.1.x and 201.2.2.x addresses to the same physical network, you could use superscopes or if you needed to assign 199.1.0.x and 199.1.1.x and did not want to change the subnet mask to support supernetting.

For more information, please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:


Supernetting is used when multiple, consecutive network addresses of the same Class are combined into blocks. For example, if you need to assign 199.1.1.x and 199.1.2.x to the same physical network and want to change subnet mask. You would use the subnet mask of 255.255.254.0 and NOT use DHCP superscopes to assign addresses from DHCP server.