When we hire the services of an Internet access provider and get (sometimes with more problems than others) to install the router that we provide, it normally becomes a decorative accessory in the house. It is our habit to immediately call for service as we see that our connection does not work and, in many cases, the technician or operator serves us loose some words that may sound like Mandarin.

That’s why from eUKhost UK Web hosting have decided to bail out the uninitiated in this connectivity technologies and we will try to become familiar with those terms indecipherable full of acronyms and seems to only make sense within the mind of the computer. The goal is to lose the fear of the antenna and cable box that does so much for allowing us to connect to the Internet.

To begin with three terms that we are not exclusive to routers, but we can find them on any device that has the ability to connect to the Internet: computers, consoles, next-generation mobile phones, etc..This trio can that sounds even the most layman, I mean the IP address, subnet mask and gateway.

What is the IP address?

The computers receive, process and send the information coded in binary, that is sequences of zeros and ones. After combining these two values can only take words, numbers, images, sound and even video games. The IP address is just a sequence of 32 of those zeros and ones, or what is the same 32-bit . If we take these 32 bits and divide it into four parts, we have what is known as octets. Now if we see these bytes, remember they are just zeros and ones, can be transformed into a decimal number as the homespun. Why the decimal number we want? No, here there are rules but you do not know that.Thus, for instance, the 8-bit number is 14 0001110.

Like any insurance you may have guessed, the smallest number that can be done with 8 bits is 00000000 and the bigger the 11111111, in decimal would be 0 and 255 respectively. So if we now take the four bytes, put them together and separated by a sequence that will, for example, would look like, 192.168.13.52. This number is an IP address .

After this roll you may ask, what is this good for? It’s simple IP address (which stands for Internet Protocol) is the way of the Internet to know who’s who online. No one can surf the net without an IP address and can not be to any website if it does not have an associated IP. That is, the IP is our online registration while driving and it is also the address to access any content . When, for example, you type in your browser www.google.es really our browser is translating the text (through a process that explain another day) to an IP address, so you can get to the Google page.

As a clarification I must say that of all possible combinations of IP, which are more than 4000 million, must be ruled out that contain the numbers 0 and 255 in the end some of their positions. And this why?Well the reason is that they are reserved IP addresses, bytes worth 0 refers to a network and not to a particular device and worth 255 are called broadcast and would be like a mass mailing of information to a set of IP addresses . No need to worry if you do not understand this at first, as users only need to know is that if we ever have to give an IP to your computer (or other device) can not put any 0 or 255 in any of the four positions.

What is the subnet mask?

Actually the IP alone does not identify the network. We must always accompany the subnet mask , which, for practical purposes is another IP but whose numbers will almost always consist of zeros and 255. I’ll illustrate in an example. Imagine that at home we have a computer, an Xbox 360 connected to the Internet and an iPad. The first IP is 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3 the second and the third 192.168.1.4.As you can see, the first three numbers are the same while the latter changes. For it is precisely to identify subnet mask as the fixed part of the IP of the variable. How? In a very simple, marking the part that does not vary with the part 255 and it does with 0. So, following the example above, the subnet mask would be 255.255.255.0.

On the Internet, thanks to the masks subnet can be distinguished IP addresses at a glance look the same but, having a subnet mask other than allowing no confusion and, most importantly, keep having IP’s available (which is danger).

What is gateway?

Knowing this, this is the easiest term to understand. And that is their own name does not invite to guess it serves. Indeed, the gateway is the “gateway” for output “home” to the Internet. This metaphorical door is closer than we think and it is actually our router, ie doing the job of communicating with the outside.

Every router, like the other devices, has an internal IP and that IP is the one we know and use it to set the rest of our computers and so on. So every time we ask the gateway we have to put the IP of our router to tell your computer where you have to go to connect to the Internet. Sure, some think now if the IP that serves as the gateway have to choose us and the answer is not necessary. Our supplier and should give us that information (along with the subnet mask) to our Internet connection is immediate to configure your computer.

With this first issue we hope that at least these three concepts are not something strange and I encourage you to learn more about your router and your Internet connection in general. If you are not yet safe, quiet, back with more terms and knowledge to share with you.

eUKhost UK web hosting service provider is deploying quality web hosting services like cloud hosting, cPanel hosting, dedicated hosting from last decade and the tech team working at eUKhost UK can solve any critical tech issues related to web hosting to deploy reliability and availability to any web business.