The private class-C address block, 192.168.0.0/24, is the most-used private IP network address, probably due to the proliferation of home-network devices like Linksys routers. When using this address scheme, you actually have a total of 254 usable addresses (192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.254). For home networks and small businesses, this is more than enough addresses for all the devices on the local area network (LAN).

One of the mistakes I see all the time involves setting up a home router with cable or DSL. A router will route traffic from one network to another, but it will not allow local traffic to get through. For example:

                       _________
                      | LINKSYS |
  WAN=192.168.0.2/24  W         L  LAN=192.168.0.1/24
                      |_________|

In the above example, traffic from the LAN will not get to the WAN (Internet) because both addresses are on the same network. The WAN and LAN must be on different networks for the router to function. Because of all the problems Linksys ran into, they now ship routers with the LAN set to 192.168.2.1/24. Because the first three octets are different (192.168.0.x versus 192.168.2.x), they act like they are on different networks, and the traffic will flow.