Reading articles on the web, they all say that "subnetting solves the problem of IPv4 address shortage by dividing a large physical network into multiple smaller networks". I do not understand how this works.
If you are dividing a large physical network into multiple sub-networks, doesn't total the number of hosts/addresses remain the same? (product of number of networks and number of hosts would remain the same)
Also, if you are borrowing 1 or more bits from the host portion of the IP address to create a subnet mask, aren't you further reducing the number of hosts that can be connected to a network?