Mac Addresses And Address Resolution Protocol - NETGEAR RangeMax WPN824 Reference Manual

Reference Manual for the RangeMax Wireless Router WPN824
The following figure illustrates a single IP address operation.
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0.4
192.168.0.5
Figure B-3: Single IP Address Operation Using NAT
This scheme offers the additional benefit of firewall-like protection because the internal LAN
addresses are not available to the Internet through the translated connection. All incoming
inquiries are filtered out by the router. This filtering can prevent intruders from probing your
system. However, using port forwarding, you can allow one computer (for example, a Web server)
on your local network to be accessible to outside users.

MAC Addresses and Address Resolution Protocol

An IP address alone cannot be used to deliver data from one LAN device to another. To send data
between LAN devices, you must convert the IP address of the destination device to its media
access control (MAC) address. Each device on an Ethernet network has a unique MAC address,
which is a 48-bit number assigned to each device by the manufacturer. The technique that
associates the IP address with a MAC address is known as address resolution. Internet Protocol
uses the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to resolve MAC addresses.
B-8
Private IP addresses
assigned by user
192.168.0.1 172.21.15.105
202-10072-01, March 2005
IP addresses
assigned by ISP
Internet
7786EA
Network, Routing, Firewall, and Basics