Glossary
FRITZ!WLAN Repeater N/G
45
Such a default gateway for the computer is negotiated au-
tomatically by the operating system or the dialing soft-
ware whenever an ISDN-Controller or DSL-Controller estab-
lishes a connection to the Internet. If a router is used for
the shared Internet access in a local network, the IP ad-
dress of the router must be entered as the default gateway
in the TCP/IP settings of each computer that wishes to use
the Internet connection. If the TCP/IP setting is configured
by means of a DHCP server, there is no need to enter the
gateway address manually.
IP
abbreviation for Internet Protocol
The IP Internet Protocol is the most important basic proto-
col for the control of data exchange in local networks and
in the Internet. The Internet protocol works without a con-
nection; in other words, data packets are transmitted from
the sender to the recipient without previous consultation.
The addresses of the recipient and the sender in the data
packets are given as IP addresses.
IP Address
abbreviation for Internet Protocol address
In IP-based networks, for instance in the Internet and local
networks, all connected devices are addressed via their IP
addresses. So that data packets are sure to be delivered
to the right address, each IP address may be assigned on-
ly once within the Internet or a local IP network.
The IP address consists of four three-digit groups of num-
bers (for instance, 192.168.178.247). Each group of num-
bers can assume values between 000 and 255.
Every IP address contains two components: the network
address and the host address. These two components can
be read out of an IP address only if the subnet mask is al-
so specified.
IP addresses can be public or private, and also fixed or as-
signed dynamically. See the corresponding entries in the
Glossary for more information.
