Small Router Question....

RaVe

<div class="IPBDescription">HELP TEH NETWORKING NUB!</div> Phe....my teachers aren't even helping me....maybe that would explain the internet downtime in the school <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Well, that and the documentation in the manual is in Engrish....bah....this is what I get for buying a Taiwan-brand router....

So anyways, I have a few questions about routers.....I'll just cut them down for simplicity's sake....

- What is a DMZ host?
- What is a Virtual Server?
- What is MTU size, and what does it do?
- What is a DHCP server?

See? I'm such a nub =_______=

Dorian_Gray

DMZ Host: A computer exposed to the internet - all TCP ports are forwarded to it.
Virtual Server: Dunno in a router... but in stuff like Apache, its having one server act as many (virtual servers).
MTU: Never had to change that when I used to use a router. I once knew what it meant, but forgot.
DHCP Server: Assigns internal IP addresses (e.g. 192.168.1.100) for computers behind the router. The single IP you get from your ISP is assigned to the router (as well as its own internal IP, such as 192.168.1.1), and internal IPS are assigned to the computers behind it.

MadCow

MTU is maximum transmission unit. It's the maximum bytes that a TCP/UDP packet can be and still be allowed through the pipe. The default is 1500 but sometimes this has to be changed for various reasons too complex to get into.

Sycophant

I'll expand on some of Dorian's explanations a little. It's not really necessary as his explained them pretty well, but more info never hurt anyone. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->

from <a href='http://www.techdictionary.com' target='_blank'>techdictionary.com</a>:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) is set up in order to allow hosting of Internet services like HTTP and email servers, while controlling access to a private network. A DMZ might be placed between the Internet and a firewall.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->This explanation isn't really clear. In other words, you could set one internal IP address as DMZ to have it receive all the incoming traffic from the internet. This would typically be used if you have one box on your network that's providing http, ftp, mail, etc.


again from <a href='http://www.techdictionary.com' target='_blank'>techdictionary.com</a>:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Virtual Server : A UNIX based server environment which allows multiple independent servers to operate on the same hardware (as opposed to dedicated or shared servers).<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->You can think of 'virtual servers' this way : website hosting companies would typically have many customers using one physical server. However, the customer can configure their own (<i>virtual</i>) server space as if they were the only ones on it.

RaVe

So...if I made my computer a DMZ host, will it direct all traffic to my computer when using the said router's IP address?

jumpingjoda

If you make your pc a DMZ host you will not have to forward ports to it.
The other pc's in the network will allso be available to the internet, but sometimes you have to manualy forward ports to them.