GATEWAY

Here you will get the software and hardware network gateway overview and general introduction, basic configurations, software configuration, bandwidth, firewall overview and routing methods. Gateway is a network point that acts as the entrance point to another network. A gateway can be a hardware or software. On the Internet, a node or a stopping point can be a gateway or a host. A router also acts as a gateway. The computers that control and manage traffic and bandwidth within your company’s network or at the ISP are the gateway nodes. In the enterprise network the gateway node acts as a proxy server and a firewall. The gateway is also associated with a router and a switch. A network gateway is an internetworking system that joins two networks together and it can be configured in software, hardware or both. Network gateway can operate at any level of OSI layers model.CONFIGURING THE GATEWAYThe gateway has two sides: The WAN side connects to your cable DSL modem and LAN side connects to your private network via a hub or switch. The main function of it is to route the traffic from computer to the Internet and back to the computer. A computer with the two NIC cards can act as a gateway. It routes the network traffic between two logically and physically different networks. In its configurations, you first configure the public side of the gateway and the IP address, which is assigned to you by your ISP. The public side configurations generally includes, assigning the IP address, DNS server, subnet mask, ISP gateway IP address and host name. Additionally, if your ISP uses PPPoE, you simply have to enable PPPoE in your gateway. On the other hand to configure the private side , you have to enable DHCP. By enabling this feature each computer in your network, will automatically pick the settings from the DHCP server that are required for a computer to be a part of the network and communicate. SOFTWARE CONFIGURATIONThe last step in the configurations, is to configure each PC in such a way that it automatically gets the all the settings from the DHCP server. Make sure that TCP/IP protocol is properly installed in each computer of your network. After configuring each PC in your network perform a reboot.After rebooting the each PC in your network, you will see a blinking underneath network icon on the right side of the task bar. If everything is done then you can access the internet, share the printer and data in your network. The firewall can also be configured with it to put a check on the unauthorized network traffic from the internet to your computer or network.