Complete guide to Router

A router is a networking device whose software and hardware is generally customized to the tasks of routing and forwarding information. To give an example, on the internet information is directed to different paths with routers.

Router can connect two or more logical subnets that do not necessarily map one-to-one to the physical interfaces of the router. The term “layer 3 switch” is generally used interchangeably with router but switch is a term which doesn’t have any technical definition as such. In marketing terms, it is usually Ethernet LAN interfaces and might not have other physical interfaces kinds.

With the illustration let us understand what a router can do. Imagine a small company which makes animated 3-D graphics for local television stations. There are about 10 employees in the company and each one has a computer. Four of them are animators while the remaining are in sales, accounting and management. The animators require sending lots of very huge files back and forth to each other as they work on different projects. For doing this they use a network, when an animator sends a file to another person the very large file shall use up majority of the network’s capacity making the network slow down for others. So therefore to reduce any kind of interference in other’s work the company sets up two networks  and a router helps to link the two networks and connects both networks to the Internet.