Binary Converter

About the Binary Converter

Binary

An important part of your computer is called "binary." You interact with your computer every day, but you might not know that binary numbers make everything work under the hood. From clicking your mouse all the way down to executing instructions in memory and storing data onto disk drives, binary is at the heart. Binary is the language of 0s and 1s that a computer can understand.

There are various ways to convert numbers between different bases. For example, you can convert base 2 (binary), octal (base 8), decimal (base 10), and hexadecimal (base 16) numbers. These calculations require more work than you might expect and are prone to errors as well! Fortunately, you can use a binary number converter to make the calculations easy.

Every IP address in an IPv4 subnet can be represented in its dotted-decimal notation as well as its binary equivalent. For example, the IP address 10.0.5.0 (base 10) is 00001010 00000000 00000101 00000000 (base 2). Subnet masks can also be represented in dotted-decimal notation or the binary equivalent.

How to Convert Decimal to Binary

To convert a number from decimal to binary:

Divide the number by 2 and write down the quotient and remainder.
Continue dividing each quotient by 2 until you reach 0.
Write down each remainder in reverse order to get the number in binary.

Example (decimal number 21):

Divide by 2	Quotient	Remainder
21 / 2	10	1
10 / 2	5	0
5 / 2	2	1
2 / 2	1	0
1 / 2	0	1

Now write the remainders in reverse order to get the binary number: 10101.