A residential gateway is a hardware device connecting a home network with a wide area network (WAN) or the Internet. The residential gateway provides port translation (NAT), allowing all the computers in a small network to share one IP address and Internet connection. The residential gateway may sit between the modem and the internal network, or a DSL or cable modem may be integrated into the residential gateway. A residential gateway often combines the functions of an IP router, multi-port Ethernet switch and WiFi access point. Residential gateways are under standardisation by the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) Computer hardware is the physical part of a computer, including the digital circuitry, as distinguished from the computer software that executes within the hardware. ... A wide area network or WAN is a computer network covering a wide geographical area, involving a vast array of computers. ... In computer networking, the process of network address translation (NAT, also known as network masquerading or IP-masquerading) involves re-writing the source and/or destination addresses of IP packets as they pass through a router or firewall. ... An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP). ... It has been suggested that layer 4 router be merged into this article or section. ... Ethernet is a large and diverse family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs). ... A modular network switch with 3 network modules (a total of 24 Ethernet and 14 Fast Ethernet ports) and one power supply. ... Wi-Fi (or Wi-fi, WiFi, Wifi, wifi), short for Wireless Fidelity, is a set of standards for wireless local area networks (WLAN) currently based on the IEEE 802. ... A wireless access point (WAP or AP) is a device that connects wireless communication devices together to create a wireless network. ... The Home Gateway Initiative is an open forum launched by a number of Telco ( Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, Teliasonera, NTT ,Telefonica, Telecom Italia) in December 2004 with the aim to release specifications of the home gateway. ...

Services offered by a Residential Gateway

• Providing a remote management service for the home gateway & the devices beyond,
• Allowing the right device or application to connect to the right service platform with the right service class / Quality of Service,
• Recognizing and potentially uniting devices capabilities
• Playing a role in the local network to federate device capabilities and offer customers a better “integrated home environment”.

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External link

• Home Gateway Initiative, the place where residential gateways are specified