From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Mar 4 10:51: 4 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0801537B401 for ; Tue, 4 Mar 2003 10:51:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-13.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.13]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDE3643FA3 for ; Tue, 4 Mar 2003 10:51:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) by pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (8.12.7/8.12.7) with ESMTP id h24IoKMQ000363; Tue, 4 Mar 2003 13:51:00 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3E64F54B.5000304@potentialtech.com> Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 13:49:47 -0500 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030301 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Chan, Herman (MTO)" Cc: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG'" Subject: Re: gateway and other freebsd network function References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Chan, Herman (MTO) wrote: > Hi: > > This might be a stupid question, but what is a gateway, I've heard many > great things about freebsd acting as a gateway to interent, but > what is it really? A gateway, also called a "default router" is a machine that knows how to get network traffic "anywhere" (theoretically). Thus, if you have a small (or large for that matter) network, each computer will have a gateway configured so that if it doesn't know how to reach a particular computer, it can send the data to the gateway, and the gateway will figure out how to deliver it. This is somewhat oversimplified, but should give you the idea. > And what are other good things about freebsd in terms of networking? That's a pretty broad question. In my opinion, the best thing about FreeBSD's networking is that it just works. No playing around, no silly browse masters to worry about. Usually, you turn on the machine and it just works. The next best thing is the abundance of network tools for performance testing, problem diagnosis and just about anything else you could need. But if you ask 5 other people, you'll probably get 5 other answers. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message