Device/Communication Setup…
The Internet or world‐wide web is actually a large network made
up of many smaller networks (sub‐networks) linked together by
gateways or routers. The gateway or router serves as an access
point to/from a particular sub‐network. For example, your ISP
provides DSL modems or cable modems which connect your local
hardware to the Internet and often serve as gateways. The
gateway address is the address of this gateway or router in the
same subnet as the host, and is used as the bridge to connect to
various other sub‐networks with different sub‐network addresses
and address masks, that collectively connect together to make up
the Internet. Data packets sent over the Internet contain both
the sender’s Internet address and the receiver’s address. A
packet is first sent to a gateway computer that understands its
own domain or group of host addresses. The gateway reads the
destination address of the packet, and if it is outside of its own
domain, it forwards the packet on to an adjacent gateway that
again reads the destination address. Then that gateway will
forward the message on, if the address is not within its domain.
Eventually, one gateway recognizes the packet as belonging to a
host within its domain. Finding a match, that gateway forwards
the packet directly to the host whose address is specified. Rather
than continually passing a packet from gateway to gateway, some
networks will use a default gateway which is the address of
another node on the same network that the software uses when
an IP address does not match any other routes in the routing
table (address domain) of the primary gateway.
Ethernet Setup…continued
An IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) is a unique
identification number for any host (this module) on
any TCP/IP network (including the internet). It
uniquely defines one host from all other computers
(hosts) on the Internet. The IP address is made up of
four octets (8 bits), each octet having a value
between 0‐255 (00H‐FFH). It is expressed here in
decimal form, with a period between octets.
The Subnet Mask is used to subdivide the host
portion of the IP address into two or more subnets.
The subnet mask will flag the bits of the IP address
that belong to the network address, and the
remaining bits that correspond to the host/node
portion of the address. The unique subnet to which
an IP address refers to is recovered by performing a
bitwise AND operation between the IP address and
the mask itself, the result being the subnet address.
Gateway Address refers to the IP Address of the
gateway this module is to cross, if your local area
network happens to be isolated or segmented by a
gateway. Typically, it is assigned the first host
address in the subnet address space. If a gateway is
not present, then this field should contain an unused
address within the host subnet address range.
NOTE: Fortunately, this model uses USB to setup its
network configuration parameters, allowing you to
instead change its IP address to an address
compatible with your own PC network without
having to network connect to it first. This saves you
from having to consult with your network
administrator to either temporarily change your PC’s
TCP/IP configuration (see TCP/IP Properties of
Network Configuration in Windows), or perhaps
having to create a separate private network using a
second network adapter installed in your PC. The
necessary steps would vary with your operating
system, but can get quite involved.
A DNS server relates symbolic names to actual
numeric IP addresses, while the DHCP server is
responsible for dynamically passing out IP addresses.
The DNS 1 Address refers to the IP address of the
first Domain Name Server used on this network. The
DNS 2 Address refers to the IP address of the
secondary Domain Name Server used on this
network.