A wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a

wireless access point In computer networking, a wireless access point (WAP), or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network. As a standalone device, the AP may have a wired co ...

. It is used to provide access to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and model, it can function in a wired

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

, in a wireless-only LAN, or in a mixed wired and wireless network.

Features

Wireless routers typically feature one or more

network interface controller A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Ear ...

s supporting

Fast Ethernet In computer networking, Fast Ethernet physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s. The prior Ethernet speed was 10 Mbit/s. Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common. Fast Ethern ...

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use i ...

ports integrated into the main

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(SoC) around which the router is built. An

Ethernet switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destination device. A netw ...

as described in

IEEE 802.1Q IEEE 802.1Q, often referred to as Dot1q, is the networking standard that supports virtual local area networking (VLANs) on an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet network. The standard defines a system of VLAN tagging for Ethernet frames and the accompanying proce ...

may interconnect multiple ports. Some routers implement

link aggregation In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining ( aggregating) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods, in order to increase throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, to provide redundan ...

through which two or more ports may be used together improving throughput and redundancy. All wireless routers feature one or more

wireless network interface controller A wireless network interface controller (WNIC) is a network interface controller which connects to a wireless network, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, rather than a wired network, such as a Token Ring or Ethernet. A WNIC, just like other NICs, wor ...

s. These are also integrated into the main SoC or may be separate chips on the

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...

. It also can be a distinct card connected over a

MiniPCI Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer and is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format t ...

MiniPCIe PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common m ...

interface. Some dual-band wireless routers operate the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands simultaneously. Wireless controllers support a part of the

IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...

-standard family and many dual-band wireless routers have data transfer rates exceeding 300 Mbit/s (For 2.4 GHz band) and 450 Mbit/s (For 5 GHz band). Some wireless routers provide multiple streams allowing multiples of data transfer rates (e.g. a three-stream wireless router allows transfers of up to 1.3 Gbit/s on the 5 GHz bands). Some wireless routers have one or two USB ports. These can be used to connect printer or desktop or mobile external hard disk drive to be used as a

shared resource In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another compu ...

on the network. A USB port may also be used for connecting

mobile broadband modem A mobile broadband modem, also known as wireless modem or cellular modem, is a type of modem that allows a personal computer or a router to receive wireless Internet access via a mobile broadband connection instead of using telephone or cable t ...

, aside from connecting the wireless router to an Ethernet with xDSL or cable modem. A mobile broadband USB adapter can be connected to the router to share the mobile broadband Internet connection through the wireless network. Some wireless routers come with either

xDSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric d ...

modem,

DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...

modem, LTE modem, or

fiber optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

modem integrated. The Wi-Fi clone button simplifies Wi-Fi configuration and builds a seamless unified home network, enabling Super Range Extension, which means it can automatically copy the SSID and Password of your router.

Operating system

The most common operating system on such embedded devices is

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Less frequently,

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determi ...

is used. The devices are configured over a web user interface served by a light

web server software Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

running on the device. It is possible for a computer running a desktop operating system with appropriate software to act as a wireless router. This is commonly referred to as a SoftAP. In 2003,

Linksys Linksys is an American brand of data networking hardware products mainly sold to home users and small businesses. It was founded in 1988 by the couple Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. Linksys products incl ...

was forced to open-source the

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

of its

WRT54G The Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi series is a series of Wi-Fi–capable residential gateways marketed by Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco from 2003 until acquired by Belkin in 2013. A ''residential gateway'' connects a local area network (such as a home netw ...

router series (the best-selling routers of all time) after people on the

Linux kernel mailing list The Linux kernel mailing list (LKML) is the main electronic mailing list for Linux kernel development, where the majority of the announcements, discussions, debates, and flame wars over the kernel take place. Many other mailing lists exist to di ...

discovered that it used

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

Linux code. In 2008, Cisco was sued in '' Free Software Foundation, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc'' due to similar issues with Linksys routers. Since then, various open-source projects have built on this foundation, including

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All com ...

DD-WRT DD-WRT is Linux-based firmware for wireless routers and access points. Originally designed for the Linksys WRT54G series, it now runs on a wide variety of models. DD-WRT is one of a handful of third-party firmware projects designed to replac ...

, and

Tomato The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...

. In 2016, various manufacturers changed their firmware to block custom installations after an FCC ruling. However, some companies plan to continue to officially support open-source firmware, including Linksys and Asus.

References

{{reflist Router Router

Wireless router A wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and mode ...

sv:Trådlös brygga

Features

Operating system

See also

References