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Glossary: A quick review of networking Terminology
To participate in a computer network, each device needs an “Internet Protocol” address that is unique on that
network. This IP address consist 4 groups of numbers separated by periods. For example 192.168.0.2
IP addresses are assigned to a device either automatically by the router or manually by a person who is setting up
the network. The router is the device that is managing the addresses and the flow of data between those
addresses on your network. Sometimes the routing function is not provided by a separate device and is built into
your cable modem or DSL modem.
When you first plug the camera into your router with the network cable, the camera asks the router to get a valid
IP address, and the router provides the next available IP address on the local network. On the other hand, the
term WAN or Wide Area Network refers to the global internet.
Your router is sometimes also called a gateway because it is like a gateway from your own local network to the
internet. Unless you have an all-in-one combination of modem and router you’ll probably see that your router has
one network jack marked WAN which connects to the cable or DSL modem and a set of 2-4 jacks marked LAN for
your local network devices.
Your router will have 2 IP addresses, a WAN IP address that identifies it on the internet and a LAN IP address that
identifies it on your local network. The LAN IP addresses often start with 192.168 or 10.0
From any computer on your network it is easy to find the WAN IP address of your router just by opening a browser
and going to
www.checkip.org
Since your own private network devices including your camera are not directly visible from the internet, for
remote access you would typically use your router’s WAN IP address together with some instructions to your
router to forward the requests from the internet to your camera.
The messages going back and forth between the camera and the router regarding the initial IP address are called
DHCP for “Dynamic Host configuration Protocol”.
Each device also has a unique hardware address that is called a MAC address. This MAC address is unrelated to
Macintosh computers. What’s special about this hardware address is that it is totally unique to the device.
