Thank God for the Internet! I can’t imagine life without the World Wide Web! Hallelujah for the wonders of e-mailing! I just can’t stop Facebook-ing! If these were people, they’d be so famous; I’m sure they’d even beat Manny Pacquiao.
We’re all used to seeing these various parts of the Internet, but none of these, including the Internet itself, would be possible to hit your computer screens without this one piece of technology: the router.
I tell you, if the router was a person, it would feel so bad for not everyone knows and understands what it can do. In fact, most people have never even seen one, or did, but just didn’t mind. It’s high time to give the router the credit and attention it deserves.
As I am writing this article on my blog only to be seen by my professor (let’s say I’m shy and I don’t want my classmates to see my work), how does the article know that it should only come up on my professor’s computer, rather than on one of the zillions of other computers in the world? It’s not because of the Internet, the World Wide Web or even Blogspot for that matter; it’s because of the router. By letting messages flow between networks rather than within networks, it is able to send a message from one computer to another.
I think I should backtrack a bit so that you may be able to understand the difference between within and between networks. Back in the 1980’s, a hub was used to send messages within a network. It’s like how group messaging works in text messages. You create a network of people who are Sun subscribers just like you, and when you send a text message to them about how your day went and so, all of them would get your message. And since you can send unlimited texts for free, you keep sending messages and all who’s within the network receives them.
But what if you want to send a text message with top secret information to only one person within the network, say to Alex? That’s when another innovation came in called the switch. It was more intelligent than the hub because it can “read” the data. If the data says that it should only be sent to Alex, then it would only go to Alex. It has the ability to screen messages and send them to one person within the network if needed be. But the problem with the switch was that for example nosy Kayla, who’s also within the same network and who wanted to fish for the same information, could easily do so because the path from your computer to Alex’s could be easily traced. Of course when that happens, the source of the top secret information would then be spilled.
Because of the hub and the switch’s inefficiency and lack of security, the router was born.
It has the ability to send messages from one network to another. Going back to my blog, if I wanted to show this article only to my professor’s computer who belongs in a different network as I am, the router can serve as the gateway from the network where I belong to to the network where my professor belongs to. But one router won’t be able to do the job since many networks are intertwined and it’s not possible to only just go through one router to get from my network to my professor’s. So between the time these words left my server and the time they showed up on my professor’s monitor, they passed through several routers connecting different networks helping them along the way. It’s much like sending a postal letter from your mailbox to the mailbox of a friend, wherein mail sorters and handlers act like routers to make sure that the letter goes into the right place.
The router has proven to be efficient, but is it secure? Yes. It has the capacity of port forwarding, or automatically masking messages so it would be nearly impossible to detect where it came from. You can be rest assured that whatever hush-hush information that you have is in good hands once you send it with a router.
You might ask, how does a router actually decide on which path my blog data will take to get to my professor’s computer? The answer is that Internet data, for instance my blog, travels over a system called the packet switching network through the router. The data in my blog (message) is broken up into small packages, each with a label that includes information on the my (sender) address, my professor’s (receiver) address, the package’s place in the entire blog and how the receiving computer can be sure that the package arrived intact. In simple terms, the router is able to understand the do’s and don’ts present in the data. In this case, I do want this blog only to be read on my professor’s computer screen. I don’t want my blog to appear on other people’s computer screens.
Yes, routers are very “intelligent” and “decisive” pieces of technology as it thinks of where data will go, what different routes it could take to get there and finally decides the best route it would take to reach its destination, taking into consideration the do’s and don’ts of the data, that is, which paths that data wants and doesn’t want to take.
Routers come in different types, from small to large: Small Office or Home Office (SOHO) for personal and residence use, Enterprises such as DilNet which cover a big area like the University of the Philippines Diliman and Internet Connectivity or Major Enterprises which what Internet Service Providers use such as Globe Broadband and Smart Bro which cover cities like Quezon City.
Even so, these routers only differ in the capacity of network they can control, but their main purposes remain the same: ensuring that data goes to where it’s supposed and doesn’t go where it’s not needed or wanted. We don't get to appreciate this because we don't see this happening, flashed before our eyes unlike the Internet or the World Wide Web. But now, it may still be invisible, but it feels good to know about it, right?
The router has done its share in making our lives less stressful with just a few clicks. And thanks to you too for making your way to finishing this article till the very end. In reading a few more of these last words, you have given the router appreciation and well, an invisible round of applause this piece of device is longing to receive.
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