P314 Broadband Sharing Gateway with 4-Port Switch
3-2
Preface
The subnet mask specifies the network number portion of an IP address. Your Prestige will compute the
subnet mask automatically based on the IP address that you entered. You don’t need to change the subnet
mask computed by the Prestige unless you are instructed to do otherwise.
3.1.3 Private
IP
Addresses
Every machine on the Internet must have a unique address. If your networks are isolated from the Internet,
e.g., only between your two branch offices, you can assign any IP addresses to the hosts without problems.
However, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the following three blocks of IP
addresses specifically for private networks:
10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255
You can obtain your IP address from the IANA, from an ISP, or assigned from a private network. If you
belong to a small organization and your Internet access is through an ISP, the ISP can provide you with the
Internet addresses for your local networks. On the other hand, if you are part of a much larger organization,
you should consult your network administrator for the appropriate IP addresses.
Regardless of your particular situation, do not create an arbitrary IP address; always
follow the guidelines above. For more information on address assignment, please refer
to RFC 1597,
Address Allocation for Private Internets
and RFC 1466,
Guidelines for
Management of IP Address Space.
3.1.4 RIP
Setup
RIP (Routing Information Protocol, RFC 1058 and RFC 1389) allows a router to exchange routing
information with other routers. The
RIP Direction
field controls the sending and receiving of RIP packets.
When set to
Both
or
Out Only
,
the Prestige will broadcast its routing table periodically. When set to
Both
or
In Only
, it will incorporate the RIP information that it receives; when set to
None
, it will not send any
RIP packets and will ignore any RIP packets received.
The
Version
field controls the format and the broadcasting method of the RIP packets that the Prestige sends
(it recognizes both formats when receiving).
RIP-1
is universally supported; but
RIP-2
carries more
information.
RIP-1
is probably adequate for most networks, unless you have an unusual network topology.
Both
RIP-2B
and
RIP-2M
sends the routing data in RIP-2 format; the difference being that
RIP-2B
uses
subnet broadcasting while
RIP-2M
uses multicasting. Multicasting can reduce the load on non-router
machines since they generally do not listen to the RIP multicast address and so will not receive the RIP
packets. However, if one router uses multicasting, then all routers on your network must use multicasting,
also.
By default,
RIP direction
is set to
Both
and the
Version
set to
RIP-1
.
