Bascule,
In his diagram, Dennis indicates that the two workstations are DHCP clients.
Since he is on a private network, behind a firewall, and does not include a
separate server for the DHCP provider service, the firewall itself could
very well be the DHCP server--although he may have another server on his
network doing the job.
A firewall, can be simply that, a firewall, and nothing else. Or, it can be
several things at the same time... in this case, possibly a DHCP server. It
can also be a router...but not necessarily so.
As a firewall that "masquerades" an internal, private network, it is doing
some routing tasks, but not all. So, it is "sort of" a router, but not
really. A true router will separate segments of a network by the subnet
mask, and isolate network traffic that does not belong on the other
segments, keeping the different segments nice and "quiet".
A router can also act as a DHCP server if it is set up to do so. And, to
complicate things even further, a router can also be a firewall. And, in
fact, a router can be a DHCP serving, firewalling, packet-forwarding, DNS
serer if you really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y, wanted it to be. But that's giving
the poor machine a bit of work to do all at the same time, and if you're on
a large internal network, it's not considered "good practice".
Does that clear things up a bit? Or, have I successfully confused the issue
beyond repair? :-)
--Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: "bascule" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> could i jump in and ask a couple of questions that might help me
> understand your diagram? i can't help you i'm afraid but i think i might
> learn something from any future answers to your query, does dhcp mean
> that the box is being given it's ip address by a dhcp server? (or is
> being a server - only one needed though right?) in which case which is
> the dhcp server, the firewall? (is this what is called a router?), is
> your network printer configured via the network or by physical switches
> etc.(i.e. how do you assign it an ip?)
> i hope you don't mind my butting in but i am interested in networking
> questions
>
> bascule
>
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