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NBG5715 User’s Guide

67

C

HAPTER

10

WAN

10.1

Overview

This chapter discusses the NBG5715’s

WAN

screens. Use these screens to configure your NBG5715

for Internet access.

A WAN (Wide Area Network) connection is an outside connection to another network or the

Internet. It connects your private networks such as a LAN (Local Area Network) and other

networks, so that a computer in one location can communicate with computers in other locations.

Figure 37

LAN and WAN

10.2

What You Can Do in this Chapter

•

Use the

Broadband

screen to enter your ISP information and set how the computer acquires its

IP, DNS and WAN MAC addresses (

Section 10.4 on page 69

).

•

Use the

Advanced

screen to enable multicasting (

Section 10.5 on page 72

).

10.3

What You Need To Know

The information in this section can help you configure the screens for your WAN connection, as well

as enable/disable some advanced features of your NBG5715.

10.3.1

Configuring Your Internet Connection

Encapsulation Method

Encapsulation is used to include data from an upper layer protocol into a lower layer protocol. To set

up a WAN connection to the Internet, you need to use the same encapsulation method used by your

Chapter 10 WAN

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68

ISP (Internet Service Provider). If your ISP offers a dial-up Internet connection using PPPoE (PPP

over Ethernet) or PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol), they should also provide a username

and password (and service name) for user authentication.

WAN IP Address

The WAN IP address is an IP address for the NBG5715, which makes it accessible from an outside

network. It is used by the NBG5715 to communicate with other devices in other networks. It can be

static (fixed) or dynamically assigned by the ISP each time the NBG5715 tries to access the

Internet.

If your ISP assigns you a static WAN IP address, they should also assign you the subnet mask and

DNS server IP address(es) (and a gateway IP address if you use the Ethernet or ENET ENCAP

encapsulation method).

DNS Server Address Assignment

Use Domain Name System (DNS) to map a domain name to its corresponding IP address and vice

versa, for instance, the IP address of www.zyxel.com is 204.217.0.2. The DNS server is extremely

important because without it, you must know the IP address of a computer before you can access

it.

The NBG5715 can get the DNS server addresses in the following ways.

1

The ISP tells you the DNS server addresses, usually in the form of an information sheet, when you

sign up. If your ISP gives you DNS server addresses, manually enter them in the DNS server fields.

2

If your ISP dynamically assigns the DNS server IP addresses (along with the NBG5715’s WAN IP

address), set the DNS server fields to get the DNS server address from the ISP.

WAN MAC Address

The MAC address screen allows users to configure the WAN port's MAC address by either using the

factory default or cloning the MAC address from a computer on your LAN. Choose

Factory Default

to select the factory assigned default MAC Address.

Otherwise,

click

Clone the computer's MAC address - IP Address

and enter the IP address of

the computer on the LAN whose MAC you are cloning. Once it is successfully configured, the

address will be copied to configuration file. It is recommended that you clone the MAC address prior

to hooking up the WAN Port.

Chapter 10 WAN

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10.3.2

Multicast

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.

Figure 38

Multicast Example

In the multicast example above, systems A and D comprise one multicast group. In multicasting,

the server only needs to send one data stream and this is delivered to systems A and D.

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. The NBG5715 supports both IGMP version 1

(

IGMP-v1

) and IGMP version 2 (

IGMP-v2

).

At start up, the NBG5715 queries all directly connected networks to gather group membership.

After that, the NBG5715 periodically updates this information. IP multicasting can be enabled/

disabled on the NBG5715 LAN and/or WAN interfaces in the Web Configurator (

LAN

;

WAN

). Select

None

to disable IP multicasting on these interfaces.

10.4

The Broadband Screen

Use this screen to change your NBG5715’s Internet access settings. Click

Configuration >

Network > WAN

to open the

Broadband

screen. The screen differs according to the

encapsulation you choose.

10.4.1

Ethernet Encapsulation

This screen displays when you select

ENET ENCAP

(Ethernet encapsulation).

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Figure 39

Network > WAN > Broadband: ENET ENCAP

The following table describes the labels in this screen.

Table 24

Network > WAN > Broadband: ENET ENCAP

LABEL

DESCRIPTION

ISP Parameters for Internet Access

Encapsulation

Choose the

ENET ENCAP

(Ethernet encapsulation) option when the WAN port is

used as a regular Ethernet.

Obtain an IP

Address

Automatically

Select this option If your ISP did not assign you a fixed IP address. This is the

default selection.

Static IP Address

Select this option If the ISP assigned a fixed IP address.

IP Address

Enter your WAN IP address in this field if you selected

Static IP Address

.

Subnet Mask

Enter the

Subnet Mask

in this field.

Gateway IP

Address

Enter a

Gateway IP Address

(if your ISP gave you one) in this field.

First DNS Server

Second DNS

Server

Select

Obtained From ISP

if your ISP dynamically assigns DNS server

information (and the NBG5715's WAN IP address). The field to the right displays

the (read-only) DNS server IP address that the ISP assigns.

Select

User-Defined

if you have the IP address of a DNS server. Enter the DNS

server's IP address in the field to the right. If you chose

User-Defined

, but

leave the IP address set to 0.0.0.0,

User-Defined

changes to

None

after you

click

Apply

. If you set a second choice to

User-Defined

, and enter the same IP

address, the second

User-Defined

changes to

None

after you click

Apply

.

Select

None

if you do not want to configure DNS servers. If you do not

configure a DNS server, you must know the IP address of a computer in order to

access it.

Apply

Click

Apply

to save your changes back to the NBG5715.

Cancel

Click

Cancel

to begin configuring this screen afresh.