Gateway is one of the most important and commonly used networking devices. In this post, we are going to discuss:
What is Gateway?
How any device in a network acts as a Gateway?
Difference between Gateway and Router with live example?
What is Gateway
A gateway is a networking device that connects two networks using different protocols together.
it also acts as a “gate” between two networks. It may be a router, firewall, server, or other devices that enable traffic to flow in and out of the network.
How switch act as a gateway in a computer network
In this scenario, the server is sending data to PC1. This data will first get enter into the switch after that it will reach to PC1.
Same as this, PC2 is sending data to PC3 and PC4 is sending data to PC5 and all this data travels through the centralized device switch. Like this, a switch is acting as a gateway that enables traffic to flow in and out of the network.
How the Router acts as a Gateway in the computer network
Here, Network 1 is assigned with the IP Address 10.0.0.0/8, and Network 2 is assigned with the IP address 20.0.0.0/8. As these two are different networks, it cannot communicate with each other. Therefore, we use a centralized device called a router.
Now, whatever data is sent by Network 1 into Network 2 or vice versa, it will go through the centralized device router. Like this, here router is acting as a gateway as it is the main gate to enter into a different network.
Now, here is the most complicated and confusing question. If this device can act as a gateway then what is the use of gateway device in a network.
The router can communicate between two different networks using the same protocol on the other hand gateway is used to communicate between two different networks using a different protocol. For this reason, the gateway is also called a protocol converter.
Here, is a video tutorial.
