Glossary of Data Communications Terms

Courtesy Enterprise-Wide Computing, Inc.

Term: gateway
Definition: the hardware and software necessary to make two techno- logically different networks communicate with one another; a gateway provides protocol conversion from one network architec- ture to another and may, therefore, use all seven layers of the OSI Reference Model; a special purpose, dedicated computer that attaches to two or more networks and routes packets from one to the other. The term is loosely applied to any machine that transfers information from one network to another, as in mail gateway. A hardware/software package that runs on the OSI application layer and allows incompatible protocols to communicate. Includes X.25 gateways. Usually connects PCs to a host machine such as an IBM mainframe.

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Last Modified:
Wednesday, April 22, 1998