EssayBoard

What is a router?  Router is like a smart switch, but it’s much more.  Router allows you to hook up multiple computers onto a single network that is using a single Internet connection — meaning DSL, Cable, and so on.  There are two types of routers, the enterprise routers and the typical routers.  Enterprise routers are for big companies to use as those companies have complex networks that require stronger and smarter routers.  A typical home network only needs a regular router.

A regular router that you can get in your electronic stores has four Ethernet ports, but make sure you get the router that also allows wireless connectivity.  With wireless connectivity, your router will be able to permit 10 or more wireless devices connect to the Internet, and it’s all depending on how fast is your Internet connection.  Regular routers cost from $80 to $160.

For your information, using Ethernet ports are better, because these ports provide better security than wireless connection.  Why?  Hackers need to hack your router directly before he can see your internal network IP addresses, and each Ethernet port represents an internal network IP address.  Internal network IP address starts with 192.168.x.x.  Wireless connection is easier to hack as hackers have wireless scanners that can sniff wireless activities as if a dog is sniffing for senses.  To confuse the hackers, you must use wireless encryptions.  To improve your wireless security you can use WPA or WPA2 wireless encryption standard.  Don’t use WEP wireless encryption standard, because it’s not as secure as WPA and WPA2.

A typical router also comes with a firewall known as Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI).  Many routers allow you to turn on the firewall or otherwise easily by checking or unchecking some options in the admin’s panel.  If your router is not turning the firewall on by default, you must do it manually, because firewall is there to help protect your network from prying eyes (hackers).  For your information, no firewall is hacker proof, but it’s better to have a firewall than nothing at all.

Some people set up their routers incorrectly by allowing default setting to stay exactly that, and so their network can be hacked easily.  Make sure to change admin’s default password to something harder, and also adding a longer and harder to guess WPA/WPA2 passphrase.  Each time a wireless device wants to access a router, a router will ask it for a secret passphrase, and if a wireless device cannot answer with a correct passphrase, the router won’t allow a wireless device connects to the network.

Some routers allow you to block or permit only specific wireless devices to access the network by filtering the MAC addresses.  Each wireless or ethernet card has a unique MAC address, and if you are physically taking a look at the card, you’ll be able to see a MAC address on the card itself.  By only allowing a registered MAC address of each wireless device connects to the network, the router is effectively permit or prevent a wireless device from accessing the router, ultimately the network and the Internet connection.  Still, there are hackers that know how to spoof (fake) the MAC address, and so this feature is not hacker proof.

Many routers have a log capability.  This allows a router to record the incoming and outgoing requests of each wireless device on the network.  By looking at the log, you can see who had accessed the router and the destinations’ IP addresses.

If you’re using Linksys router, you may be able to use DD-WRT firmware to turn your $80 Linksys router into one of those enterprise routers.  For your information, enterprise routers are much more expensive as these carry more features.  DD-WRT allows your normal Linksys to have more features.  Please be careful when applying DD-WRT to your router, because doing it without following the correct instruction may render your router unusable.