Comment on Misadventures with my first server (On a old laptop) #1
Fermiverse@feddit.de 9 months agoDHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol ) is a communication protocol that is used to coordinate a network via a server. The server in most home cases is your internet router. It coordinates the network.
Think of your network as a town with streets, every street has a unique name aka network address. So when a new device gets into the town it gets a unique address in a certain format, when requested by the clients. Mostly IPv4 i.e. 192.168.178.20.
Second there are ports. Ports are the house numbers of the streets. So if two devices use the same IP they still can be differentiated by using different ports. To address a specific port you write it behind the IP, in our example 192.168.178.20:80. So we use port 80.
To come back to the beginning the router coordinates the IP addresses and the ports from your internal network via DHCP and makes sure every device is accessible and no doubles.
There is a lot more but very briefly this is it.
Lenny@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Thank you 🙏🏻 this is a great ELI5 for my smooth brain!
PlexSheep@feddit.de 9 months ago
If I remember correctly from my CCNA, it is also responsible for configuring routes from one network to another, because configuring static routes in routers is not fun.
Fermiverse@feddit.de 9 months ago
You are correct, there is a lot more to dive in like NAT, IPv6, static or dynamic address, UPnP, MAC address, subnet space etc.
But I wanted to keep it simple.