router : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

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router
A box that goes between your cable modem (or ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology) modem) and your LAN (Local Area Network). It usually also acts as a hub. Make sure you find a picture of the rear of the router to make sure it has enough connectors for all the workstations on your LAN. Some routers have only one LAN connector — designed to plug into a hub. Popular brands include NetGear, LinkSys and SMC. Routers offers some firewall protection. They may be configured to monitor browsing end emails and to prepare email reports. NAT (Network Address Translation) keeps hackers from discovering the internal IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of your computers. To the outside world, the router makes your entire LAN looks like one computer doing all the web accesses. DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) support in the router means you don’t manually have to manually assign IP numbers to each of your workstations. VPN (Virtual Private Network) is an advanced feature home users would not need. Configuring a router is quite easy. You use your browser to http://192.168.2.1:88 the internal IP of the router itself which acts as the gateway to all the computers on your LAN. You then talk to a tiny webserver living in the router. Amazingly the router is able to pass through high speed Internet connections with only about a 40 MHz processor internally.

Most routers have autosensing ports, so it does not matter if you use pass-through or cross-over Ethernet cables. However, it makes the electronics more sensitive. Don’t connect or disconnect router cables with any power on at either end.

A WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) router can have one, two or three antennas sometimes called bands. The more antennas, the faster it can go because it can get a datastream going on each antenna.

Brands

Unfortunately none of the brands offer throughput specifications.

You can now get routers that combine in one box: a DSL (Digital Subscriber Loop) modem, a router, a firewall and a wireless router. Make sure you get a newer 802-11AC model wireless router. It is the latest and greatest, claimed compatible with the older G and B devices even even the recenet I and N models. Make sure they also support B and G as a fallback. If you have, for example and old laptop, your router may have to revert to the old G protocol to handle it.

Shopping for a Router

electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Linksys EA2700 App-Enabled N600 Dual-Band Wireless-N Routerto electronic home
asin B007IL72CI
Gigabit Ethernet connection. 4 ports.
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Linksys E1200 Wireless-N Routerto electronic home
asin B004T9RR6I
Cisco. Single band, 300 MBps. Supports Wireless-N, -B, -G protocols. Has four × 1000 Mb/sec ports and one USB printer port.
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒D-Link Wireless AC750 Dual-Band Gigabit Cloud Routerto electronic home
asin B00JQX2J10
Sub Model DIR-818LW. Comes in white, black, red and turquoise. White is cheapest. Inexpensive Dual Band Router. Includes 4 gigabit wired ethernet ports. Your laptop may only be able to connect to the slow 2.4 GHz port not the 5 GHz port. The main disadvantage is the router has no activity indicator lights on the various ports. You don’t get feedback that a connection is working. Comes preconfigured with a random 10-character password. I bought one on 2015-02-28. This is what I am using myself. There are two indicator lights (one with a circle router upper light and one with a world map router lower light) that can glow green or yellow. Both should be glowing green. The little black WPS button is used to speed up configuration without having to retype the wireless password.

I would not recommend this router.

  • Three times it just stopped for no reason and needed a hard reset (paper clip) and OS reboot to get it going. You also have to reenter the complete router configuration.
  • The hard reset requires to you poke a paper clip in the bottom for 10 seconds, but no longer, to reset to factory defaults. It does not always work. You can poke it in to two different levels. It is not clear which one is correct. Do it until you see a change in the lights.
Make sure you have the latest firmware. It will not be up-to-date even fresh out the box. Before you update firmware, write down all the settings so you can restore the manually. Any strange Internet problems may be caused by obsolete firmware. Details
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Linksys EA3500 App-Enabled N750 Dual-Band Wireless-N Router and USBto electronic home
asin B007IL6OR2
Gigabit Ethernet connection. 4 ports. 5G. 300+450Mbps
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Linksys EA4500 App-Enabled Dual-Band Wireless-N Router and USBto electronic home
asin B007IL7AKM
Gigabit Ethernet connection. 4 ports. 450+450Mbps
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Linksys X2000 Wireless-N Router with ADSL2+ Modemto electronic home
asin B005HFJFHW
Has only three ports. Handles WiFi b/g/n.
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

Tips

If you suspect your router is not working, here are some things to try:

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