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Routers are considered gateway routers when they act as the primary WAN (Wide Area Network) interface appliance. In the diagram below, the gateway router serves as the ISP's main connection point, as well as the LAN (Local Area Network) side connection to desktop PCs, servers, laptops, printers, or any other device on the network. If the gateway router needs additional Ethernet connections, a simple hub can be added to provide additional ports.  Gateway Routing Sources. For the SOHO (small office and home office) market, a wide variety of gateway routers are available from manufactures such as Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Belkin, and others. On the enterprise network level, contact vendors such as Cisco, or 3-Com either directly through the vendor, an online retailer, or local VAR (Value Added Reseller). Gateway Routing in Frame Relay or IP Applications. Since the late 90's more businesses have migrated their private networks to packet or frame-based networks, saving the long-haul telecom charges for a fully meshed network. In the case of frame relay, each location would likely have an access T1 for frame relay, and PVCs (permanent virtual circuits) would allow interconnection between two points through the frame relay network. While each PVC has a charge, and each must have a CIR (committed information rate), businesses found that the flexibility of virtual network could not only save them money, but they could reconfigure their network in much less time, using much less hardware. IP services became mainstream in 2001, with the popularity of the Internet taking hold for business applications. While security of IP-based networks remains the main concern, a properly designed IP VPN (virtual private network) is the most flexible. In an IP network, firewalls and intrusion detection appliances are a must to keep valuable company data private. The Gateway router for IP-based or Frame Relay-based networks provides the security and traffic management required to maintain a safe computing environment. |
Gateway Routers
