Wireless Router – Every Home Should have One
A wireless router functions twofold, it first acts as wireless access point that established sessions with your device such as a desktop PC or portable devices like Laptop, netbooks and mobile phones. Second, it acts as a network router that determines the first available network to which your session’s packet information can be sent and conversely received and delivered to your device.
How They Work
Wireless routers follow certain transmission protocols like the IEEE WiFi 802.11x family of standards. Once connected to a wired local area network, the router starts to broadcast a certain frequency with this your portable device with suitable wireless capability can detect so that a session can be established, such as an internet access. Most laptops and netbooks as well as mobile phones already have built-in wireless capability, usually a WiFi compatible antenna. Otherwise, there are USB dongles that allows wireless connection when connected to the Universal Serial Bus port of your portable device.
Advantages
If you have a broadband LAN connections at home or the office, a wireless router can allow multiple users to access your LAN without further investments in hardware to wire your device to the LAN. In addition, as a router, it has firewall features that provide better protection of your PC or laptops against hackers because individual PC or laptop IP address are not directly showing on the internet. As integral to its router function, unless you need something more robust and powerful, you won’t need the usual firewall software that consumes computing resources on a server.
Wireless routers have gone a long way since it first appeared as a consumer product where before it was an industrial-grade computing hardware. The costs has significantly dropped and it offers more bandwidth courtesy of the WiFi 802.11g standard most of them comply with.
