This isn't really related to linux, but it has to do with networking so I thought that I would ask it here.

So, i was looking around for a good definition of what exactly gateways do, and the best that I could really get was that they are some sort of way of connecting two networks together. Im not really sure in what capacity they are doing this. Specifically, what needs doing, what are they doing, how does this differ from a router?

Secondly, I want to know how packets are handled by these gateways. Perhaps more specifically, i want to know if it functions like a switch (constantly devoting the majority if not all of the available bandwith to a computer at a time, and specifically that line,). This would be opposed to the hub which sends traffic everywhere (I don't know if they do anything that way anymore!). The reason for asking this question is i want to know if there is potential for traffic sniffing on my network from fellow users, (under the obvious assumption that nobody else had administrator control, and the admin isn't an evil person).

Thanks for your time,
Jim

a gateway is a router, or rather they are the same thing at different levels on the OSI model, the gateway being a slightly more abstract concept versus the point-at-it-there-it-is hardware level router. basically it's the point on a network where all non-local netowrk traffic is sent. this can be a hardware router, and for the huge majority of networks, it is.