ZyXEL Communications P-2900-4HB User Manual

Chapter 5 LAN Setup

P-2900-4HB User’s Guide

Subnet masks determine the maximum number of possible hosts on a network. 
You can also use subnet masks to divide one network into multiple sub-networks.

A DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server can assign your ZyXEL 
Device an IP address, subnet mask, DNS and other routing information when it's 
turned on.

RIP (Routing Information Protocol) allows a router to exchange routing 
information with other routers.

Traditionally, IP packets are transmitted in one of either two ways - Unicast (1 
sender - 1 recipient) or Broadcast (1 sender - everybody on the network). 
Multicast delivers IP packets to a group of hosts on the network - not everybody 
and not just 1.

IGMP (Internet Group Multicast Protocol) is a network-layer protocol used to 
establish membership in a Multicast group - it is not used to carry user data. 
There are two versions: 1 and 2. IGMP version 2 is an improvement over version 
1, but IGMP version 1 is still in wide use.

DNS (Domain Name System) is for mapping a domain name to its corresponding 
IP address and vice versa. The DNS server is extremely important because 
without it, you must know the IP address of a networking device before you can 
access it.

 for technical background information on LANs.

Find out the MAC addresses of your network devices if you intend to add them to 
the Static DHCP screen.