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Networking 101: Understanding Internet Routing

What exactly is the Internet? This article will explain the concepts required to understand BGP, our next Networking 101 topic. Shipping packets around the Internet requires the cooperation of separate organizations, so it isn’t as straightforward as learning about an IGP routing mechanism.

The Internet is a wild an unruly place. When people talk about Internet governance, the conversation is normally related to IP allocation and domain name management, rather than censorship or control. The Internet actually is tightly managed with regards to network allocation. This issue of Networking 101 will clear up those mysterious organizational acronyms, and explain what their purpose really is.

Internal BGP is a mechanism to provide more information to your internal routers. Most of last week’s Understanding BGP article focused on a stub configuration, where a single router served all the BGP sessions for an AS. This time we’ll delve into the practical use of BGP: iBGP and what it takes to accomplish multihoming.

Networking 101: You Don’ t Know NAT

Due in large part to alleged NAT support on consumer devices, many people are confused about what NAT really is. Network Address Translation is used for many purposes, including but certainly not limited to, saving IP addresses. Demystification follows.