We use a router provided by our service provider which used to be Qwest but is now Century Communications.
The modem that talks to the telephone pair with radio frequency above the voice band also acts as a domain name server. Other machines which usually have cute names that we assign have the choice of DHCP, dynamic host control, or assigning permanent IP addresses that all start with 192.168. DHCP assigns an IP address when it's necessary. Routers like that can also use unique MAC addresses on ethernet ports to handle connections by visitors who are temporarily present. The modem/router also maintains data for recently used domain names and can short circuit a request based on time-to-live information provided with a previous lookup. (It is a way to discover where your kids have been last night.) Connecting to a local machine needs only its name. The modem/router handles the rest and we talk to each other using the same procedures we would use to talk over the internet. It's also quite possible to set up an Apple machine so that it provides the same services. OS neXt can use Berkley's BIND package but I have even done it with an SE/30. The lady here has been pushing a tiny box from Apple that acts as a router using the WiFi channels. It seems to work well at our local, SMMUG, user group meetings. Hosts files also work but they're not the same everywhere. I think of that as the way DEC did it in the 70's. It does allow me to connect to external sites with my own invented name as in ssh pair to log into my ISP. RFC 1918 declares 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, and 172.16.x.x foe use only in local domain name assignments. I am happy to see someone else paying attention to RFCs. They are requests for comments that are maintained by the internet engineering task force, <tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1918>. It's worth a look. And look around for some others to see just how the internet works. You might also try the UNIX tool dig. man dig in Terminal.app for more. Another thing that routers do at home is to modify internet packets using different port numbers so that many machines in a local net can use only the outside IP address to access the net.. The router looks at returned packets to see the port number that was used for the request. It then knows which local machine is waiting for the reply. At 16:00 -0500 4/30/13, Jerry wrote: >Doug, > >I am not sure I am following you here on the on the RFC 1918 address space >issue. Unless a person has set up an internal DNS server resolving private >address space, a person would either typically specify the private address >directly, or would use a hosts file for internal usage. > >Can you elaborate further please? > > > >On 04/30/13 03:31 PM, Doug McNutt wrote: > >> >>Just to avoid confusion. In this context DNS is Domain Name Server >>and is very much associated with your router whenever you use the internet >>or even access local machines via an IP address like 192.168.xxx.xxx -- --> A fair tax is one that you pay but I don't <-- -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "G-Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to g3-5-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
