Time to go Online: Routers and Modems

Many people access the internet through their home network, but very few people understand what takes place under the hood for a connection to be established to the internet. If you are a constant internet user, you must be familiar with these two terms. Anyone without a full understanding of these two terms would have thought they are one. Let’s take a brief walkthrough on the terms under consideration.

The first important term one should know is the router. The router is also referred to as a Central Hub for devices. It is a device that connects a Local Area Network (LAN) or Wi-Fi network to the internet or external networks i.e. it allows the devices in LAN to communicate wirelessly or via wired connection to the internet or an external network. The router creates a local area network (LAN) within your house, company or industry, allowing your devices to share files within that area and with areas outside your network as long as the right configurations are made on the router. With a router, you can enable security settings, prioritize traffic to certain devices, and more. An Ethernet cable is connected to the router to transmit and receive information from and to the internet.

The second import term is the modem. A modem is a device much like a router that connects your home, usually through a coax cable connection, to your Internet service provider (ISP). Unlike a router, the sole purpose of a modem is to connect your network to the internet. The modem takes signals from your ISP and translates them into signals your local devices can use. We can relate this to Modulation and Demodulation, which is actually the two words the MODEM was coined from. Each modem has an assigned public IP address that identifies it on the Internet. It connects to a wide area network (WAN) or the internet. Most modems only have three ports, one that connects to the internet, one that connects to a router, and one that connects to a power source This is often used in offices.

Source: Network Encyclopedia

A lot of the terminologies mentioned might seem strange, especially if we are new to computer networking, we will therefore have a breakdown of every new terminology.

Terminologies

1. ISPs (Internet service providers) basically give a user access to the internet.
2. WAN (Wide Area Network) simply is a network of computers in a large area e.g. network spanning through cities, countries e.t.c. for sharing resources or exchanging data.
3. LAN (Local Area Network) is a network of personal computers in a small area for sharing resources or exchanging data. The area is limited to houses, offices e.t.c

How Connection Really Occurs

First thing to note when connecting a computer to the internet is the communication mode the devices are going to use for communication. The computers connect and communicate with each other using TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). To connect to the Internet and other computers on a network, a computer must have an NIC (network interface card) installed. It is a component that connects two ports together. New Routers usually come with new Ethernet cables which are used to connect both the modem and the router together. Then the router is connected to the LAN port of the computer system. This set up varies according to the different needs of organizations, sometimes a router connects directly to the internet directly without a modem and other times a router might not be used to connect the LAN; the hardware setup depends really on the design of the network of the particular home or organization. Computer networking is a broad field, one article will simply not be enough to explain all there is to know but we hope this article has sparked your interest to find out more. Kindly leave a comment below should there be any topic you would like us to cover in detail.

REFERENCES

• https://www.xfinity.com/hub/internet/modem-vs-router#:~:text=Can%20you%20tell%20the%20difference,the%20network%20inside%20your%20house.
• https://www.hellotech.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-a-router-and-a-modem/amp
• https://www.computerhope.com/issumoreh001358.htm#:~:text=To%20connect%20to%20the%20Internet,and%20connect%20to%20other%20computers.