newbie tcp/ip routing questions

[redss]

I hooked up a router and have been seeking info about tcp/ip routing and have a couple questions:

Say for example I have 3 computers hooked to the router: pc-A, pc-B, and pc-C

1) if pc-A is running a web server, and pc-B requests a web page from pc-A, does pc-B's http request also get sent to pc-C? or does the router know to send the packets only to pc-A?

2) if pc-A requests a web page from google.com, does the router send all of google's tcp/ip packets to all 3 computers, or only to pc-A? And how does the router know that those packets are intended for pc-A and not pc-B/C? I assume there's some kind of header that contains the info, but I don't know the name of it...

thanks!

 

[spi200]

Hi

You are correct - the request's know which IP address to respond to as the request have a Source address in the HEADER. If the router has a NAT then it keeps the info of the source as well, so the packet's are returned to the appropaite IP address.
If every IP address (PC) received info which was not requested, then the bandwith would quickly be consumed as you added Workstation's to the segment.

Regards

David