Netgear router with sky modem/router?

esuhl

luckycat99 wrote: »

I need to sit down with it and figure out what WAN LAN etc are.

LAN = Local Area Network. The network which connects your PCs together & is completely separate from external networks (like the Internet).

WAN = Wide Area Network. In the case of a domestic router, this is essentially the network you connect to for Internet access (i.e. your ISP's network).

MAC address = Unique identifier assigned to network interfaces - intended to be permanently associated with a device at the point of manufacture (although you can easily make a device appear to have any MAC address you like). An example MAC address would be: 01:2a:4f:a7:89:ab. Sometimes hyphens are used instead of colons.

IP address = Assigned to a network interface on a temporary basis (i.e. an IP address isn't intended to be permanently assigned like a MAC address is). IPv4 (that is, version 4) is by far the most commonly used variety, although IPv6 is likely to become popular at some point. IPv4 addresses are a series of 4 "octets" of numbers (in the range 0 to 255). An example IP address would be: 213.66.0.23.

NAT = Network Address Translation. Originally, it was intended that each network interface attached to a network would be assigned its own unique IP address. So, if you had 5 PCs you would need 5 IP addresses from your ISP. There are only so many IPv4 addresses available, so the concept of NAT was used to effectively share IP addresses between devices.
This works by defining certain ranges of IP addresses as non-routable or "private". In other words, you can use IP addresses in the range 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 for your local network (LAN) and so can your neighbours. Your router will never use these IPs outside your own private network.

Your router has two network interfaces - one for the LAN, and one for the WAN (Internet). Say you are using a PC on your network which has an interface that has been assigned the IP address 192.168.0.2. You open a web page. Your computer (192.168.0.2) connects to your router (which might have the LAN address 192.168.0.1). Your router sees that you are asking for something from the WAN, so it makes the request using it's WAN interface with the IP address assigned by your ISP (say, 213.66.0.23), and makes a note of the request. When the server replies with the web page files, your router looks in its notes to see which PC on your LAN originally made the request, sees that it was 192.168.0.2, and so passes on the files to that PC.

It's a lot easier to understand than it is to explain, so sorry if I haven't explained that very clearly!

esuhl

DVardysShadow wrote: »

• Routers, pc or anything do not have IP addresses - it is network interfaces which have IP addresses. So on a router there will be 2 IP addresses, one on the LAN interface and the other on the WAN interface.

Sure - the router itself doesn't have an IP address as such, but the router has network interfaces which have IP addresses. It's common to refer to a "computer's IP address" instead of a "network interface of a computer's IP address" or even "the public IP address of a computer", which isn't anything to do with that computer - it's the WAN IP of the router... As long as you understand how networks work (and, if necessary, make it clear whether you're referring to a private or public IP address) there's not really any room for confusion in domestic situations.

• The domestic router is in fact a router combined with a simple network switch or hub

Usually, they're routers, switches, wireless access points, DHCP servers, NTP servers, firewalls, and network bridges or digital "modems" in one. Of course, there's no such thing as a digital modem because modems are devices that MOdulate and DEModulate digital signals into an analogue audio signal that can be transmitted as sound over the telephone network (remember the weird noises that dial-up modems made?).