What can a broadband router do more than a regular router?

I would like to buy a router but don’t know which one I need if I want to give a PC, laptop, PSP (playstation portable), nintendo DS and a Playstation 3 wireless internet.

Asker: Brad, 13 years old

Answer

You use a router to share your internet connection between all the devices you would like to connect to the internet (computers, game consoles, etc.). The router ensures that network packets from your devices reach the internet, and that packets coming from the internet then end up on the right device. You must therefore be able to connect a router to the internet on the one hand, and on the other hand you must be able to connect the devices that you want to provide internet to it. Let’s take a closer look at both options.
At the moment, you can generally get internet in Belgium in two ways: either via a telephone cable (eg Belgacom) or via the cable connection (eg Telenet). If the internet is connected via cable, the company itself already installs a so-called cable modem and you can connect any router to it. If your internet comes over the telephone cable, a different type of modem must be used (currently almost always a so-called ADSL modem). There are two options here: either you buy a separate modem and connect your router to it, or you buy a router that already contains such a modem. To sum it up, you need to know how to get internet first and foremost. If it is about the cable, you can buy a simple router that does not contain a modem. If it comes over the phone, you can choose whether you buy a router with or without an ADSL modem.
The second question is how to connect your devices to your router. This can be done either with network cables or wirelessly (and most recent routers can do both). Via a network cable is almost always faster than wireless, and almost every recent PC or laptop has a standard built-in network port. It may therefore be easier to connect those devices to the network via a wire. For devices that do not have a network port, or when it is difficult to pull wires, you can install a wireless network. Now a number of standards have been agreed that ensure that these devices talk to each other in the right way. An older standard now understood by most wireless devices is the ‘IEEE 802.11 b/g’ standard: IEEE is an organization that creates such standards, and ‘802.11 b/g’ is the name of the standard. Because the full name is a bit long, you usually just see ‘b or g’ network. A newer, faster standard is the N standard (or, in full, ‘IEEE 802.11 n’). However, it has taken a very long time to bring this newer standard to market, which is why some manufacturers did not wait until the standard was fully ready and already marketed devices under the name ‘draft N’ (literally: ‘draft version N’ ). However, now that the standard is ready, you better be careful not to buy those ‘draft N’ versions now. The big advantage of the N standard over the b/g standard is that it is faster. Since the devices you speak of (a Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, etc.) do not yet support the new N standard, I would simply buy a router that supports wireless internet via the b/g standard. They are noticeably cheaper than a router that can handle the N standard and which you will not immediately use anyway.
Note: if you install a wireless router, make sure you secure your network. You do not want other people to be able to listen in on what is happening on your network.

Answered by

Prof. Roel Wuyts

Computer Science Programming Languages ​​Object Oriented Analysis and Design

IMEC
Kapeldreef 75 3001 Leuven
http://www.imec-int.com

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