DRAFT v0.3 English, 01 Mar 2012
- 17 -
9 Referenced Terms and FAQ
DHCP
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) allows the automatic allocation of an ‘IP address’ for the
device within your network by your router or network server. Using DHCP makes the configuration
process much simpler.
IP address
Every computer or device that communicates over the Internet must have an IP (Internet Protocol)
address. This also applies to most of today’s large networks within companies. Common IP addresses
are written as 4 groups of 3 digits, separated by full stops e.g. 123.987.567.543.
Proxy Server
Proxy servers are used in most larger organizations as a bridge between their internal networks and
the Internet. It can protect the computers in the internal network against attack from the wider
Internet.
Subnet Mask
A network infrastructure in any organization will usually be split up into ‘subnets’ that connect
associated groups of users. In this case the full IP address can be seen as having two parts - a prefix
that identifies the subnet and the remainder that identifies a device in the subnet. The subnet mask
shows how much of the IP address is formed by the prefix and how much by the rest. A typical subnet
mask might look like ‘255.255.127.000’.
Default Gateway
Where an organization’s network is split into a number of subnets, then the ‘gateway’ is the device
that allows the traffic to flow out of the subnet and into the organization’s wider network
infrastructure - including other subnets and to the Internet (in this case, often through a proxy server).
This default gateway will also have an IP address.
DNS server
We usually refer to websites by their web-address or ‘URL’, for example www.francotyp.com. In fact
though these are just labels and actually computers just use IP addresses. The Domain Name System
refers to a special type of computer server that translates web addresses into IP addresses. Hence a
DNS server would return 80.67.28.145 when asked for the address of www.francotyp.com.
Proxy Authentication
Often a proxy server needs to know who is talking to it - to confirm that it is a known user of the
organization’s network who is authorized to have access to the Internet. Any device will then have to
log-on to the proxy server with its own user name and password. This process is called
‘authentication’.
To Next Page
Loading...
