Multiple IP addresses in a single NIC!!!

I hope you have idea how Internet sharing works in WINDOWS… You have to have two different Network Interface Card (LAN card), one to get connected to the internet and the second one to share the internet to other network. In this way a single pc can connect to X numbers of networks with X numbers of NIC. In this way a pc can act as a bridge between two different networks. This seems so complex a process and also there are many more limitations. Moreover the routing between two different network is simply not possible in windows. But in Linux things are way different and way ahead. Slowly but surely i am getting the facts why people prefer LINUX. Some of you might laugh at me but I am really amazed to know that multiple IP addresses can be assigned in a single NIC. Yes I am talking about the range-x thing. I can provide a range of IP assigned to a single NIC. eg. starting from IPs 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.20, doesn’t matter if my static IP was from another network( eg. 192.168.0.1). If my static IP and rangex IPs are from different networks, then by just changing the gateways of static eth0 card to the IP of any of the rangex IP and also changing the gateways of the rangex IP to the main eth0 IP address, I can configure a simple router (routing between 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.0.0 networks). VLAN can also be implemented using this method. This is probably how the web hosting companies provide a range of dedicated IP addresses to the Client. Well I couldn’t write more details and the codes or configurations required for this as it would take the whole night for me to explain the whole procedure. But this is very interesting indeed. You can get some details from the following link:

Bind Multiple IP Addresses to a Single Network Interface Card (NIC) – by Tony Bhimani

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