What are computer routers?

As name suggests, this device does routing. But the question is what does it route? Computer routers are usually employed in commercial and residential environments for routing and forwarding electronic information. Imagine a scenario where you want to access a particular web page through your web browser. First you need to pass the URL of the website you want to access to the web browser and then the web browser converts the English in to electronic data packets and sends to the destination website. The devices called routers make sure these packets are successfully routed to the destination website.

Usually routers are used for two different purposes; internet access (connectivity) and internal access (intranet). Based on the intended use of the router, the features may widely differ. As an example, the routers used for internet connectivity will have more security features compared to the routers used for internal use. These routers can be programmed for routing rules so the security of the connectivity can be ensured in the data layer level. Usually in an organization, there are few areas interconnected in terms of networking such as floors or departments. These are separated as groups due to ease of managing the network related activities. These network segments are connected through routers for making sure the inter-segment information routing is done properly. The routers used in enterprise organizations are relatively expensive as there are many additional features included in the devices.

There is another type of routers used at houses and small offices. These routers are used for connecting the home computers to a broadband network. These routers (residential gateways) are usually lower priced as they have a set of limited functionalities. These routers are not sophisticated or secure as an enterprise router and may not have a large number of ports as well. If you have multiple computers connected to your router, all the computers connected to the router will be shown as one computer with one IP address in the internet. This makes the computers secure as they are not visible to attackers. Many routers of this type now come with built-in firewalls making the home computers more secure.

The latest addition to the router family is the wireless (Wi-Fi) routers. These routers behave as the same way as residential gateways but there are no wires connecting the computer and the router. Instead, the computers have a devices installed that can receive and transmit radio waves and the router has an antenna transmitting the receiving the radio waves. This facilitates the wireless communication between the router and the computers allowing the usage of computers flexible. Wi-Fi routers come handy when it comes to wireless enable laptops. There are many types of enterprise level Wi-Fi routers available in the market for commercial use as well.