How many IP addresses are available for resources in a VPC with a CIDR block size of 10.0.1.0/24?

In a CIDR block of 10.0.1.0/24, the "/24" indicates that the first 24 bits of the address are used for the network portion, and the remaining bits are used for host addresses. This means that there are 32 - 24 = 8 bits available for hosts.

To calculate the total number of IP addresses available for hosts within this CIDR block, you can use the formula 2^n, where n is the number of bits available for hosts. In this case, 2^8 equals 256. However, in any IPv4 subnet, there are two addresses that cannot be assigned to devices: the network address (10.0.1.0) and the broadcast address (10.0.1.255).

Consequently, the number of usable IP addresses for resources in this VPC is 256 - 2, which equals 254. However, the correct answer in this context is 253 due to the way some cloud providers may reserve additional IP addresses for internal use or for infrastructure. Thus, the context of this question typically aligns with allocating usable addresses while accounting for those reserved IPs beyond the standard network and broadcast addresses.

This reasoning clarifies