GATEWAYS

A Gateway is a combination of hardware and software, network point that acts

as an entrance to another network.
A computer network is a collection of interconnected computing devices that
can exchange data and share resources.
A network's protocol specifies a common set of rules and/or signals, such as
Ethernet or Token Ring, which the networked devices use to communicate with
each other. Each network must have associated with it a well defined language
or protocol to enable the respective computers on the network to be able to
communicate.
Different networks, however, often use different protocols such that computers
on one network may not be able to communicate with computers on another
network without the assistance of a device or process to translate between the
two protocols.
A gateway is such a machine that performs the translation between two
disparate protocols.
Gateways perform code and protocol conversion to facilitate traffic between
data highways of differing network architecture.
At present, the gateway location protocol (GLP) as a method for linking the
plurality of address translating servers has been started to be examined.
The GLP is a protocol used to reduce a load on a server and exchanges address
information so that a plurality of servers holds the same information.
Gateways make communication possible between different architectures and
environments.
They repackage and convert data going from one environment to another so that
each environment can understand the other's environment data.

 A gateway repackages information to match the requirements of the destination

system. Gateways can change the format of a message so that it will conform to
the application program at the receiving end of the transfer.
o A gateway links two systems that do not use the same:

Communication protocols

Data formatting structures

Languages

Architecture

For example, electronic mail gateways, such as X.400 gateway, receive

messages in one format, and then translate it, and forward in X.400 format used
by the receiver, and vice versa.
To process the data, the gateway: Decapsulates incoming data through the
networks complete protocol stack. Encapsulates the outgoing data in the
complete protocol stack of the other network to allow transmission.
On the Internet, a node or stopping point can be either a gateway node or a host
(end-point) node. Both the computers of Internet users and the computers that
serve pages to users are host nodes. The computers that control traffic within
company's network or at your local Internet service provider (ISP) are gateway
nodes.
In the network for an enterprise, a computer server acting as a gateway node is
often also acting as a proxy server and a firewall server. A gateway is often
associated with both a router, which knows where to direct a given packet of
data that arrives at the gateway and switch which furnishes the actual path in
and out of the gateway for a given packet.
A gateway may consist of devices such as protocol translators, rate converters,
matching devices, fault isolators, or signal translators as necessary to provide
system interoperability.