RFC 1918 “Address Allocation for Private Internets” (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918) specifies 10.0.0.0/8
, 172.16.0.0/12
, and 192.168.0.0/16
as private addresses suitable for unrestricted private internal use. Many home networks use the
192.168.1.0/24
address space.
Since 10.0.0.0/8
is a larger address space than 192.168.0.0/16
, it would make sense to use 10.0.0.0/8
since there can be more IPs per network.
Why isn't 10.0.0.0/8
commonly used instead?
192.168.0.0/16
addresses are allocated by default on many domestic routers, which is why many domestic networks use them.10.0.0.0/8
and172.16.0.0/12
are in fact extremely common and used all over the place. It's just whatever the network designer chooses, for good reasons or poor reasons.