The terms LAN, WAN, MAN, HAN and such are used very sloppily.
They can be used to designate the physical (geographical) area covered
by the network.
Most of them were developed in the early networking days when computers
and communication equipment was expensive and the physical distances you
could communicate over were limited.
Technically, that little Linksys gadget you can hold in your hands is a
LAN server, because the cabling that it will drive can only go a short
distance. Its input comes from a WAN. In today's case that would most
likely, but not necessarily the Intenet.
In your case you have chosen to put your LAN server between your LAN and
your true server at your Internet Service Provider. In addition, as I
understand it you have an additional modem server further dividing
things up.
If you care Wikipedia has a nice article that will tell more than you
want to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_network
HM
On 10/19/2014 12:31 AM, Michael Havens wrote:
> so the port I'm wondering about is an input port then. I thought I
> read that it is also a wan part. How does that work? Like I know the
> internet is a wan but how does it work in this case?
>
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:27 PM, koder <iscreamkid@gmail.com
> <mailto:iscreamkid@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> I have the same device in my networking system. My answer may not
> be 100% correct, but here is my SWAG:
>
> The device was designed to serve as a router with DHCP server
> capabilities, in other words it hands out IP addresses to requests
> that come from one of the output ports.
>
> You can access the device using its web page and turn that feature
> off, it then acts as a bridge router and the DHCP functioning will
> come from further upsteam, from your other router.
>
> The network will not function correctly if you have two different
> devices trying to pass out IP addresses using DHCP. Everything
> pretty much quits talking to each other.
>
> While I have never tried using the device by plugging everything
> only into the output ports, I am guessing that connection setup
> would use the device as a bare dumb switch. No more double DHCP,
> only happy connectivity.
>
> I am reasonably sure my explanation is not technically correct,
> but is functional. I was quite loose with input, output, upstream,
> and downstream analogies, but that is the way I think of them.
>
> By the way on a separate item, it is my understanding that most of
> these devices are hacked and infected and should be either
> upgraded, or replaced. I have yet to do either, but I think that
> is the case.
>
> HM
>
>
>
> On 10/17/2014 03:08 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
>> That is the router I have. On the back there are 4 LAN ports and
>> another port labled Internet. My setup had the cable from the
>> modem feeding into that port and everything worked until a couple
>> of days ago. Today I switched that cable to a LAN port and
>> everything worked again. I asked in another thread the purpose of
>> the internet port and MR Butash gave me an answer but it is still
>> a lot hazy. In my research to answer the question myself I found
>> a wikipedia article that states:
>>
>> The original *WRT54G* was first released in December 2002. It has
>> a 4+1 port network switch
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switch> (the Internet/WAN
>> port is part of the same internal network switch, but on a
>> different VLAN <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLAN>).
>>
>> My questions: What is that port for if not to be an input port
>> for the internet
>> and
>> Why was it working as an input port for the internet and why did
>> it stop working as such?
>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>
>>
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