What is a default gateway?

We explain what a default gateway is and how to find its IP address

Networking can be tricky. It involves a lot of complex moving parts such as the default gateway, which is a critical part of any network. It may sound complicated, but in reality, it's much simpler than you may think.

Essentially, the default gateway is simply the device that devices on a network pass all their traffic through before communicating with a different network. It's basically the doorway that your local network uses to connect to the internet. When a node on the network wants to transfer packets between another IP address, it sends it to the default gateway to be sent on to its destination.


On smaller Local Area Networks (LANs), such as a home or small business network, the default gateway is likely to be the router that provides the network's broadband connection. For larger businesses that operate many smaller network segments as part of a larger whole, there might be different default gateways for different areas of the network.

How to find the default gateway's IP address

Often, you'll need to know the IP address of your default gateway in order to troubleshoot any networking issues, as it's your network's primary point of contact with the wider internet. Thankfully, it's a snap to find this information out.


First, open your operating system's command line utility - Command Prompt for Windows, or Terminal on Linux and macOS. If you've got a Windows machine, use the 'ipconfig' command, the 'netstat -nr | grep default' command on macOS or the 'ip route | grep default' command if you're a Linux user. The command line utility should return a list of connection details, including the IP address of the default gateway device.