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Network: Street

IP address: House

Port: What kind of thing from inside the house you want

Gateway: House #1, start of street.

DNS: Tells you which house number corresponds to a family name. "Oh why yes, 'samhuk' lives at house # xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

The analogy goes on and on. It's how I have always thought about networks since.

This[0] blog post explains the basics of IPs, ports, etc. using that analogy

[0] http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/tcpip-ports-sockets/

One of the canonical computer networking texts, Kurose and Ross's Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, is chock-full of these sorts of analogies and metaphors.

It's very readable.