Before You Begin - ZyXEL Communications P-2900-4HB User Manual

Chapter 5 LAN Setup
Subnet Mask
Subnet masks determine the maximum number of possible hosts on a network.
You can also use subnet masks to divide one network into multiple sub-networks.
DHCP
A DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server can assign your ZyXEL
Device an IP address, subnet mask, DNS and other routing information when it's
turned on.
RIP
RIP (Routing Information Protocol) allows a router to exchange routing
information with other routers.
Multicast
Traditionally, IP packets are transmitted in one of either two ways - Unicast (1
sender - 1 recipient) or Broadcast (1 sender - everybody on the network).
Multicast delivers IP packets to a group of hosts on the network - not everybody
and not just 1.
IGMP
IGMP (Internet Group Multicast Protocol) is a network-layer protocol used to
establish membership in a Multicast group - it is not used to carry user data.
There are two versions: 1 and 2. IGMP version 2 is an improvement over version
1, but IGMP version 1 is still in wide use.
DNS
DNS (Domain Name System) is for mapping a domain name to its corresponding
IP address and vice versa. The DNS server is extremely important because
without it, you must know the IP address of a networking device before you can
access it.
Finding Out More
See Section 5.4 on page 54

5.1.3 Before You Begin

Find out the MAC addresses of your network devices if you intend to add them to
the Static DHCP screen.
50
for technical background information on LANs.
P-2900-4HB User's Guide