<P> A gateway is the piece of networking hardware used in telecommunications . It is used in communications networks to allow data to flow from one discrete network to another . Gateways are distinct from routers or switches in that they communicate using more than one protocol and can operate at any layer of the 7 layer OSI model of networking . </P> <P> The term gateway can also loosely refer to a computer or computer program configured to perform the tasks of a gateway, such as in a default gateway . </P> <P> A network gateway may contain devices such as protocol translators, impedance matching devices, rate converters, fault isolators or signal translators as necessary to provide system interoperability . It also requires the establishment of mutually acceptable administrative procedures between both networks . It can also work as a protocol translation / mapping gateway interconnecting networks with different network protocol technologies by performing the required protocol conversions . Both the computers of Internet users and the computers that serve pages to users are host nodes, while the nodes that connect the networks in between are gateways . For example, the computers that control traffic between company networks or the computers used by internet service providers (ISPs) to connect users to the internet are gateway nodes . </P> <P> In the network for an enterprise, a computer server acting as a gateway node is often also acting as a proxy server and a firewall server . A gateway is often associated with both; a router, which knows where to direct a given packet of data that arrives at the gateway, and a switch, which furnishes the actual path in and out of the gateway for a given pocket . </P>

What is gateway in networking and how it works