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How do networks work?

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:03 pm
by onceloving
I'm interested in knowing how networks work. Let's say that I have all of this information (listed below) on a computer that is in a network. Can I access that computer from outside of the network? What do these things listed below mean?

IP Address: 10.1.1.65

Subnet Mask: 255.255.254.0

Default Gateway: 10.1.1.99

DNS Server (Primary): 10.1.1.9

DNS Server (Secondary): 10.1.1.14

Domain Name: example.com

WINS Server (Primary): 10.1.1.5

WINS Server (Secondary): 0.0.0.0

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:54 pm
by alex.barylski
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... :?

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:29 pm
by Benjamin
It means you are :twisted: FIRED::!

Seriously though, if you have this information, why are asking this question?

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:23 pm
by feyd
please keep it constructive guys.

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:38 pm
by d3ad1ysp0rk
Where did you get the information? What is this for?

http://wikipedia.org has a lot of info..

Re: How do networks work?

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:31 am
by Roja
onceloving wrote:Can I access that computer from outside of the network?
...
IP Address: 10.1.1.65
10.* is a private netmask. It isn't "routed" to the rest of the world, so no, you cannot access that computer *at that ip address* outside of the network.

Of course, you can have multiple IP's. For example, from my machine, my router's ip is 10.0.0.1, but from your machine, its ip is 24.something.something.something , and it can be reached from outside this network at that address.

This question is FAR too broad for these forums. You need to read up on the basics of networking.

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:10 am
by evilmonkey
I'll try to expand on what's been said so far.

Think of the internet as one giant network, and your home (I guess) network being a small network. At home, you have a router which assigns you an IP (10.1.1.65 that you posted). That means that someone from whithin your network can access your computer through that IP address. You can also access computers on your network, and they will have IP's like 10.1.1.66, 10.1.1.67, etc.

Should your router be connected to the internet, the router of your ISP will assign you an IP address (in my case it's 70.*.*.*). If you want to access your workstation at home from somewhere else, 70.*.*.* will reach your router, not your workstation. The router will not know whether or not you are trying to access 10.1.1.65 or 10.1.1.66, or 10.1.1.67 etc. Therefore it will just ignore you. Think of shouting "HEY MAN!" into a large crowd. No one will know who you're talking to, and people will most likely ignore you. There are ways around this (called port forwarding), but I won't get into it.

So keep in mind: two networks. Internet and your home LAN. Your home LAN can access the internet (assuming of course that your router is plugged into a modem), but it would be tough for you to access your workstation from outside the network. Hope this clears some stuff up for you. :)