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Whats the rule of thumb on the amount of hosts per network segment?

My network consists of 3 different networks (VLANs). All three VLANS serve a different purpose. When I inherited this network I sort of laughed at how big the subnets were for each VLAN:

VLAN 30 - 10.4.0.0/16
VLAN 40 - 10.5.0.0/16
VLAN 50 - 10.6.0.0/16

These are very large networks. I was always told that the rule of thumb is to never make a network segment larger that about 250 hosts or a Class C network, or broadcast traffic could start to degrade performance. VLAN 30 is about to reach 230 hosts. Most of these hosts are servers that host applications. Should I created another VLAN and start adding new servers to this network. I'm worried that VLAN 30 will get to congested if I add to many more servers.

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John Meggers

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denver218

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Thanks. My switching network looks as follows except I have 5 switches on VLAN 30.

VLAN 30 has five 3550 switches all connected together via fiber (GBIC Ports) and then one of the switches has a link to my 3550-12G Core Switch. Do you think if I add a 6th switch on VLAN 30, I should go straight into the core switch with this one, instead on connecting it to one of the other 5 switches?

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eeRoot

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Mizzio59

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bgilsing

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denver218

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Thanks everyone. I use Solarwinds Orion for Network Monitoring so I will just keep an eye on performance then. Currently my CPU usage on the VLAN 30 switches are only at 3% and memory is at 24% so I believe I will just keep adding devices until I see a performance issue. Thanks.