Introduction

This chapter introduces some of the basic networking concepts and the methods to utilize them on Linux systems. It provides us with a good base to build upon. We're going to start with two computers connected with a single network cable and work our way from there to configure a router to connect your network to the Internet.

Routers are devices that are configured to span multiple networks and forward packets between them as needed. They also perform Network Address Translation (NAT) in order to allow your private network to share a single public IPv4 address.