Networking
It is like…
The Default Gateway Is Your Compound Gate
A default gateway is like the gate of your compound
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Lesson notes
Key points
- Inside your compound you talk to neighbours directly, but to reach anyone outside, you must pass through the gate.
- Your house is a host, the compound is your subnet, and the gate is the router interface every outside packet uses.
- The analogy breaks because your host first checks the subnet mask to decide if the destination is local, then sends to the gateway's MAC address.
Takeaway: Off-subnet traffic always leaves through the default gateway.
Quick check: Where does a host send a packet whose destination is on another subnet?
- Straight to the destination
- To its default gateway
- To every host by broadcast
Off-subnet traffic is handed to the default gateway router for forwarding.
The gateThe mappingWhere it breaks
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