Gateway and router What is the difference between?

What is the difference between a gateway and a router?

　　 A gateway is a computer system or device that serves as the important task of conversion. Between two systems that use different communication protocols, data formats or languages, or even completely different architectures, the gateway is a translator. Unlike a bridge that simply conveys information, the gateway repackages the received information to meet the needs of the destination system. So what is the difference between a gateway and a router?

　　The difference between gateway and router has the following points:

　　The main role of the router is to connect different networks and transmit information. According to use, it can be divided into: access, enterprise-level, backbone-level, terabit, multi-WAN and 4G wireless, etc.

　　 The gateway can be a router, a switch or a PC. To communicate within the same network segment, there is no need to intervene the gateway. Only when the host is communicating with a device other than this network segment, it is necessary to send all data packets to the gateway device, and then forward through the gateway device or There are routing processing and so on.

　　 Router is a network layer system. Routers are generally divided into two categories in the current market. One is a single-protocol router and the other is a multi-protocol router. The router can convert the data format and become a necessary device different from the network interconnection between protocols.

　　The relationship between gateway and routing is expressed as: gateway is the basis of network connection, and routing is the bridge of network connection.

　　The router uses static routing or dynamic routing to determine the shortest path between networks. Static routing needs to be manually set by the administrator, while dynamic routing uses some protocols to dynamically discover the path between networks and determine the shortest path. Generally, static routing is used for small networks, and dynamic routing is used for large and complex networks.

　　 Now, the router integrates the function of the gateway, so the router also has the function of the gateway.

The difference between gateway and router:

　　 From the definition of gateway and router, if you simply connect two networks, then only the gateway is sufficient.

　　 Assume that there are only two networks: network A and network B

　　To enable network A and network B to communicate, only use a gateway to connect these two networks, because there are only two networks, and there is no need to determine the shortest path between the networks.

If you need to connect multiple networks, in order to ensure the reliability of the network, the network structure needs to be designed as a full mesh or partial mesh. In this way, for the communication between the networks, two devices, a gateway and a router, are required, because the current router integrates the gateway Function, so only use a router as a device.