Understanding Your Home Router

When you connect your wireless network to the Internet via a broadband connection, you are using the NAT functionality in your router (whether it's a stand-alone wired router, or a router built into a wireless broadband router product) to create a private network in your home.

In a NAT environment, you configure your network based upon two separate IP address spaces:

• Your public IP address: You've typically got only one of these assigned to your public-facing router by your Internet service provider (ISP).
• Your private IP addresses: These IP addresses are used within your private subnet.

Your public IP address is (in almost all cases) uniquely yours - no one else on the entire Internet should have the same public IP address that you do.