What is a router? - Well it’s exactly what the name suggests. It routes things. Those things in this case happen to be data packets that are transmitted across networks and the Internet. You unknowingly are accessing the Internet through various routers all over the world. In fact if you break it down, the internet is nothing more than PC’s (great and small) connected via various cables which hook up to routers, repeaters. Of course it’s slightly more complicated than that, but in essence that’s the bread and butter of the Internet.

For those of you that want a slightly more technical description then please read this next bit:

A routers heart and soul is dependant on a process called Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT maps one or more local addresses to one (or more) remote address(es) by adding extra routing information to the data that you send (the packet header). The header contains the routing information (amongst other things), and therefore it leaves a trace back to you via the router.

This was best described by my university lecturer’s favourite book (the name escapes me).

 Original Packet

Packet after router

Packet after Local IP pool

Each Hop (or place that you go through to get to the destination you require) will add a header. This means that the size of the packet increases with every hop. So the data you send from your PC will be smaller than the data sent from your router. This does slightly increase download times, and as a result it appears that your cable/dsl line isn’t as fast as you thought. We will see this later in the review.