Its amazing how much more sense this is making to me - not fully, but it is coming together in pieces . .

I am going to go research it more deeply - specifically NAT and PAT and CIDR . .

I'm not lazy and I won't pose a question that I am too lazy to research the answer of myself -
So I'm just going to lay out a few things I'm still not sure about and give you sweet time to answer while I go and look up these other things -

VLSM is the standard that allows for [****.****.****.****/**] the string after the backslash here? and it is also what allows for private IPs within a Public network??
Can you elaborate alittle more on VLSM?

Private (RFC 1918) Addresses:

10.0.0.0/8 (range = 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255)
172.16.0.0/12 (range = 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255)
192.168.0.0/16 (range = 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)
I know that somewhere within this thread is a not-so-obvious answer to this question:

How do the /** addition (# of bits in the mask - obviously not borrowed bits because I seem to remember that 14 was the largest number of bits allowed to borrow and I see a 16 here) determine the range you have supplied in ()'s? I know its simple but what is throwing me is the second one down where the 2nd octet from left goes from .16. to .31. (Is this in reference to those formulas in the last post?)

Maybe I'm being a bit redundant in my questioning, I apologize - but on the brighter side, for anyone that is following this thread, experiencing the same issues with subnetting that I am and trying to sort through them- at least the same topics are being hit from differant angles - - - usually a good thing in facilitating understanding.

Though I have a feeling your going to tell me that I will find the answer to these questions as I research . . lol