Gateways
A gateway is any hardware and software combination that connects dissimilar network environments. Gateways are the most complex of network devices because they perform translations at multiple layers of the OSI model. For example, a gateway is the device that connects a LAN environment to a mainframe environment. The two environments are completely different. LAN environments use distributed processing, baseband communications, and the ASCII character set. Mainframe environments use centralized processing, broadband and baseband communications, and the EBCDIC character set. Each of the LAN protocols is translated to its mainframe counterpart by the gateway software. Another popular example is the e-mail gateway. Most LAN-based e-mail software, such as Novell’s GroupWise and Microsoft’s Exchange, can’t communicate directly with Internet mail servers without the use of a gateway. This gateway translates LAN-based mail messages into the SMTP format that Internet mail uses.
Example:
Gateways
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