A gateway is a node that allows you to gain entrance into a network and vice versa. On the Internet the node which is the stopping point can be a gateway or a host node. A computer that controls the traffic your network or your ISP (Internet Service Provider) receives is a node. In most homes a gateway is the device provided by the Internet Service Provider that connects users to the internet. We can find the gateway IP address on Windows, Linux and Mac as below.

On Windows :

Click Start -> Run -> Type cmd to launch command prompt.

In command prompt type :

route PRINT

The output will have a list of gateway addresses for the particular system.

On Lunux :

Start Terminal and Run ,

$ route -n

This will display the routing table as below

Kernel IP routing table

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface

192.168.31.0 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo In the above output the default gateway for the system is 192.168.1.1 as the flag is set as G (refers to gateway) for this ip adress.

On Mac :

Open Terminal and Type : $ netstat -rn The output will look like as below. Routing tables

Internet:

Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire

default 192.168.1.1 UGSc 7 0 en0

127 localhost UCS 0 0 lo0

localhost localhost UH 1 7373 lo0

The output shows the default gateway for the mac as 192.168.1.1 a the flag for default network connection is set as "G".