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 model, it can function in a wired local area network, in a wireless-only LAN, or in a mixed wired and wireless network.

Features

Wireless routers typically feature one or more network interface controllers supporting Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet 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 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 proc ...

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 ...

or MiniPCIe 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-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 on the network. A USB port may also be used for connecting mobile broadband modem, 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 di ...

modem, DOCSIS modem,

LTE LTE may refer to: Science and technology * LTE (telecommunication) (Long-Term Evolution), a telephone and mobile broadband standard ** LTE Advanced, an enhancement *** LTE Advanced Pro * Compaq LTE, a line of laptop computers produced by Compaq * ...

modem, or fiber optic 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. Less frequently, VxWorks 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 SoftAP is an abbreviated term for "software enabled access point". This is software enabling a computer which hasn't been specifically made to be a router into a wireless access point. It is often used interchangeably with the term "virtual router" ...

. In 2003, Linksys 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 netwo ...

router series (the best-selling routers of all time) after people on the Linux kernel mailing list discovered that it used GPL 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, DD-WRT, and Tomato. 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 sv:Trådlös brygga

Features

Operating system

See also

References