The magic numbers
Certainly in more than one occasion you’ve had need to rebuild your Internet connection and you have had to struggle with lots of numbers and strange concepts: DNS, network mask, ip, gateway … however, are the concepts of network under TCP / IP more essential. On this page you’ll see its meaning.
IP Address
The number IP is the logical address that identifies your computer on a network (either local or external). This direction is one for each team in the world, or only within each local network, and the call because only logical direction to know the IP, any router is capable of directing data to the target machine (or another router that is probably capable of sending data to the target computer.
If your computer does not connect directly to internet, no need to have a unique IP number worldwide, but only at the level of the subnet that is integrated. So, if you have a home network with three teams, you only need one public IP (only) for the computer that connects to the Internet, having private IP subnet level for each computer or device (private IPs that are unique to each subnet) . For example a private IP address of a class C network would be 192.168.0.1 for the internet gateway, 192.168.0.2 for the following machine, etc.
Class C subnets in the memorandum of private IPs 192.168.0 available goes to 192 168 255, being unusable the first and last, being reserved for the identification of the network itself and broadcasting.
The subnet mask
A subnet is basically a set of computers connected directly to each other. Each computer needs to belong to a subnet, know at least two factors: its own IP number and size of the network. The latter fact is one that provides the subnet mask.
The subnet mask indicates the number of computers that comprise subtracting the number of 255: a type C subnet mask would be 255.255.255. 0 number indicates that the subnet has 255 possible directions (255-0 = 255), while 255 255 255 232 indicates that a subnet mask of 24 teams possible. In this last example, the range of ips that we could use our home network and would be between 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.24
Normally all the computers within a subnet use the same subnet mask.
Gateway
The computers connected to internal networks often use a gateway to the Internet (gateway, gateway). This gateway acts as a router, discriminating internal traffic, which leads to the subnet, which is derived from the external to your destination on the web. In the normal course have only one public IP, we assign this our gateway.
DNS Server
A server DNS is responsible for transforming a host name (www.example.com) to IP address (192.0.34.166). For this transformation basically a database query and if not find the answer, pass the question to a top-level DNS server.
DHCP Server
Clicking on properties of TCP / IP on your network adapter, you’ll see that you have two options: get IP dynamically, or enter it manually, in which case you must also enter the IP network gateway and the subnet mask.
Obtaining IPs is achieved dynamically through a DHCP server, the server automatically gives every computer connected not only IP but also gateway, netmask, and even WINS server address and DNS servers.
Since the end of each computer user has nothing to configure (but check the box to obtain dynamic IP) solution of DHCP are widely used by ISPs, and of course, you can also use it to your home network if you have a router with this feature.