Advanced, Wired Enterprise Networking Architectures, P2 of 5

Wired Residential Gateway Devices

Commencing in about 2004 or 2005, it became commonplace for Internet Service Providers to help their subscribers by making a single "Residential Gateway Device" available to them. In a single, convenient box, these devices combine all of the basic functions that are necessary to directly connect several personal computers to the Internet, using one simple, low-cost Ethernet cable between the new little box and each PC.

The earliest of these boxes supported only a "wired" infrastructure; if you wanted WiFi services, you had to add additional hardware. For this reason, we refer to these boxes as "Wired Residential Gateway Devices", and each contains three separate modules as follows:

1. Broadband Modem: Interfaces with the ISP's Wide-Area Network
2. NAT Router: Multiplexes the ISP's single Internet address onto multiple IP addresses in a new LAN subnet
3. Ethernet Switch: Provides several Ethernet connections into the new LAN subnet

The brief, highly focused video clips below describe these Wired Residential Gateway devices and show how easy it is to use them to connect one or more PCs to the worldwide Internet, until all of the available Ethernet connectors are used up. If you already understand all of this, you can skip ahead by clicking on the "NEXT" icon below. Otherwise, watch all of these video clips: