What is a Router & its Types? Easy Explanation

What is a Router?

Before we indulge into the world of routers, you need to understand what a broadband connection is and how it works. According to Dictionary.com, broadband is "a high-speed, high-capacity transmission medium that can carry signals from multiple independent network carriers. This is done on a single coaxial or fiber-optic cable by establishing different bandwidth channels. Broadband technology can support a wide range of frequencies. It is used to transmit data, voice and video over long distances simultaneously."
Routers take information that arrives through your broadband signal via a modem, decipher it, and deliver it to your computer. The router will also choose the best route for the data packet so that you receive the information quickly.
Many different types of routers have been developed so that the information coming over your broadband connection can be sent to a variety of different receivers including your computer, your phone, and others.

Types of Routers

There are several types of routers that you will want to understand. You need to know the difference so that you can set up your network or at least so that you can understand what the local computer guy tells you to do.

Broadband Routers

Broadband routers can be used to do several different types of things. They can be used to connect two different computers or to connect two computers to the Internet. They can also be used to create a phone connection.
If you are using Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, then you will need a broadband router to connect your Internet to your phone. These are often a special type of modem that will have both Ethernet and phone jacks. Although this may seem a little confusing, simply follow the instructions that your VoIP provider sends with your broadband router - usually you must purchase the router from the company in order to obtain the service.

Wireless Routers

Wireless routers connect to your modem and create a wireless signal in your home or office. So, any computer within range can connect to your wireless router and use your broadband Internet for free. The only way to keep anyone from connecting to your system is to secure your router.
A word of warning about wireless routers: Be sure your secure them, or you will be susceptible to hackers and identity thieves. In order to secure your router, you simply need to come to WhatIsMyIPAddress.com, and get your IP address. Then, you'll type that into your web browser and log into your router (the user ID and password will come with your router).
Remember to change the router ID and password as well or someone else might lock you out of your system.
Once there, visit the wireless settings, type in a security key and you'll be about ready to go. Make sure you write down the key or save it in a Word document. When you try to log onto your Internet connection, you'll just need to enter the key. Your computer should remember the key, but write it down somewhere for safe keeping just in case.

 

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Complete IPv6 Deployment Across The World

IPv6 Deployment Across The World Introduction As a first step towards deploying IPv6 (that will co-exist with IPv4) across the Globe, the IPv6 Forum was formed in July 1999. Its common mission is to educate Internet users on the advantages of the IPv6 protocol, and to promote and implement the worldwide deployment of this protocol. It has an impressive membership list comprising of manufacturers, leading Telecom operators, Internet service providers, and vendors of Internet solutions, Consulting companies, R&D institutions and many others.   The current status of deployment of IPv6 in different parts of the world is very encouraging and gives an idea of what the future holds for the Internet in the coming years. USA The US Government had issued a mandate to all vendors both civilian & defense - to make the switch to an IPv6 platform by summer of 2008. This move boosted deployment of IPv6 in coming years. The General Services Administration in 2007 had awarded over $150 billion worth of contracts, which was close to the total amount spent on the Y2K upgrade.   A small percentage of the live addresses In the Internet were even supported by IPv6 as early as in December 2005. Canada Viaginie of Canada, a consulting and research and development firm specializing in advanced computer networking technologies has developed a tunnel server, the freenet6.net to allow any IPv4 node to be connected to the 6Bone. International connectivity of IPv6 has been achieved with US and other countries through native IPv6 and over IPv4 tunnels. The following information is useful, as far as IPv6 availability is concerned: 1)Quake IPv6 is now available at quake.ipv6.viagenie.qc.ca 2)DNS root server IPv6 accepts DNS requests by IPv6. 3)NTP over IPv6 provides a NTP service to the community Japan   IPv6 deployment in Japan enjoys strong government support   (Japan Gigabit Network) JGN- IPv6 over ATM and Native IPv6 transport (not tunnel)   Major ISPs, and even start ups and rural ISPs have started services   IIJ launched the first IPv6 service (tunnel) in 1998 and has more than 100 customers   NTT Communications launched the first commercial IPv6 service in 2001, started DUAL services for ADSL users and a world-wide transport service   Backbone and IX providers (NSPIXP6, JPIX) have started functioning   Major router vendors (Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC, Furukawa Electric, Yamaha etc) are 'v6-ready'   Major terminal vendors in home appliances, sensors, web cameras, etc., have started trials   Service providers like Powered Com, Japan Telecom, KDDI have started trials in areas like mobile phones, online gaming, Internet Car/Train, medical China The Chinese government has initiated the China's Next Generation Internet project (CNGI), which is a five-year plan with the objective of cornering a significant proportion of the Internet space by implementing IPv6 early. The United States accounts for almost a third of the maximum possible IPv4 addresses (about 4.2 billion), while China has more high-speed Internet users than it does IP addresses. China plans to put on display the new IPv6 deployment during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Everything from the security cameras to vehicles and the coverage of the Olympic events will be done via IPv6, and there will be live streaming of the events over the Internet. France   The IPv6 Task Force was created in France on September 25th 2002. The deployment of IPv6 has been done in a phased manner with the active involvement of France Telecom, the leading Telecom operator in the country. 1998 heralded the deployment of an IPv6 native network internal to FT R&D Division (RIMBAUD) connecting the 5 R&D centres nationwide and connected to the 6Bone, and in the year 2000, France Telecom was assigned a sub-TLA prefix (2001: 0688::/32) The following events mark the evolution of IPv6 deployment in France:   Migration of France Telecom's IPv6/WDM nationwide experimental VTHD Network from tunnelling to full Dual-Tack between 2001 to 2003, marked by the first European WLAN Mobile IPv6 Campus in collaboration with Strasbourg University 2001, and testing of multimedia and standard IPv6applications.   Deployment of OpenTransitv6 (Asia, US, Europe), a native IPv6 international commercial network in 2002   IPv6 migration of FT s Commercial IP word wide network (OpenTransit) in 2005: 50 POPs worldwide are Dual Stack since June 2005 and launch of a nationwide IPv6 broadband access experiment to FT s Internet users in June 2005. IPv6 connectivity is based on Teredo, Tunnel Broker and ADSLv6)+   As of December 30th, 2005, FT was assigned a larger IPv6 prefix (/19) Korea KOREAv6, composed with IPv6 Trial Services and Field Test for IPv6 Equipments is the IPv6 Pilot Project launched in Korea, and its key objectives are: To create IPv6-ready businesses in the public & private sector To speed up the commercialisation of IPv6 equipments To promote public awareness about the IPv6  The implementation has been in a phased manner:   Phase I (2004) Constructing the nation-wide IPv6 trial network Providing VoDv6, VoIPv6, IPv6 Internet gateway service and Testing 39 IPv6 equipment such as routers, switches, VPN etc. Phase II (2005) Applying IPv6 technologies to the 8 services of IT839 such as WiBro, VoIP, and Home network Expanding IPv6 network to the public sector Transition of existing IPv4 portal sites and applications into IPv6 based ones Phase III (2006) Providing large-scale All-IPv6 services such as VoIPv6 to users as far as possible for the 8 services of IT 839 Supporting the commercialisation of IPv6 WiBro contents and applications Facilitating the massive use of IPv6 Internet services in the public sector The government of Korea plans to achieve complete IPv6 Transition in Public Sector and 10M IPv6 users by 2010: total IPv6 Transition in Backbone network by 2010 and in access network by 2013 for ISP.

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What is a Private IP Address?

What is a Private IP Address?

When you send a letter from your house to a friend, you have to know the address to send it to so that the postman knows which street and which house to take it to. Computer networks such as the Internet are no different, except instead of sending your Web traffic to an address like 1145 Main Street, your computer's "location" (the destination for your emails and Google inquiries) is known by its IP (Internet protocol) address.

In theory, your individual computer has to have its own unique IP address so that it will only receive the information that is meant for you. You don't want your emails and the responses to your Google searches going anywhere else. (If you go to the WhatIsMyIPAddress.com home page, you can see your public IP address.)

However, there is a major exception to this: That would be those network computers that are linked to a router and share the same IP address. Included in that number are home/office networks. All routers have an IP address built in.

In this instance, the router—once it has established its Internet connection through an Internet Service Provider—sends data to each individual device on that network based on something called a Network Address Translator (NAT).

The organization that doles out IP addresses to the world reserves a range of IP addresses for private networks. Private networks can use IP addresses anywhere in the following ranges:

• 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (65,536 IP addresses)
• 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (1,048,576 IP addresses)
• 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (16,777,216 IP addresses)

The assumption is that these private address ranges are not directly connected to the Internet, so the addresses don't have to be unique. In today's world, these private address ranges are often used for the protected network behind network translation devices.

Why is that? Because in a private network, the router connects to the Internet. From there, the router connects the other devices (usually desktops, laptops and tablets).

Because the private address ranges in a network don't have to be synchronized with the rest of the world, the complete address range is available from any network. A network administrator using these private addresses has more room for subnetting, and many more assignable addresses.

These blocks of addresses can be used by anyone, anywhere. Even if your neighbor is using the exact same addresses, it won't cause a problem. This is possible because these addresses are known as non-routable addresses. The network devices on the Internet are programmed to recognize these addresses. These devices (known as routers) will recognize that these are private addresses belonging to your network and will never forward your traffic onto the Internet.

You do need to obtain one real address from the general pool so that your home router can perform what is known as Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT is a process in which your router changes your private IP Address into a public one so that it can send your traffic over the Internet, keeping track of the changes in the process. When the information comes back to your router, it reverses the change—from a real IP address into a private one—and forwards the traffic back to your computer.

A typical home network router keeps two IP addresses: one for local devices to connect to across the local area network (LAN), and one for the external or wide area network (WAN) Internet connection.

The internal LAN-IP address is normally set to a default, private number. Linksys brand routers, for example, use 192.168.1.1 for their internal IP address. No matter the brand of router, its default internal IP address is listed in the manufacturer's documentation. Administrators have the option to change this IP address during router setup or at any time later. Unless someone manually changes it, however, this private LAN-IP address remains fixed.

The external WAN-IP address of the router is set when the router connects to the Internet service provider. This address can also be viewed on the router's administrative console. Alternatively, the WAN-IP address can be found by visiting a Web-based IP address lookup service—such as WhatIsMyIPAddress.com—from any computer on the home LAN.

I'm being attacked by one of these IP addresses!

If you are seeing unexplained Internet traffic to your computer from these numbers, it is important to remember the following things:

• The traffic does not come from IANA. As the authority for IP addresses, they do not use or operate them, and they are not the source of the traffic.
• As use of these numbers is untracked and unrestricted, we can not tell you who is using these numbers.
• It is perfectly normal to see traffic from these numbers if you have a small home or office network. By default, most routers and access points use these numbers to assign to your local computers. It is most likely these numbers represent computers on your own internal network.
• If you see these numbers in the headers of an unsolicited email, they usually indicate transit between servers within a corporate network or ISP. They are not useful in identifying the origin of an email. In such cases you can usually find the true origin by looking for the earliest "Received" mail header.

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How to Hide Your IP Address

How to Hide Your IP Address

Borrow a different IP address to go anywhere online and stay hidden.

There are a few ways to hide your IP address...that unique number assigned to the network connection on the computer.

Top 4 reasons why people want to hide their IP address:

1. Hide their geographical location
2. Prevent Web tracking
3. Avoid leaving a digital footprint
4. Bypass any bans or blacklisting of their IP address

The safe and secure way

Use a Trusted Proxy or Virtual Private Network. Sign up with these services and when you go online, you'll be showing the world a different IP address...one that's on loan from the service you're using.

Here are some VPN providers that you might consider:

• Hide My Ass
• PureVPN
• Private Internet Access
• VyprVPN
• ExpressVPN

VPNs can be free or you can pay for the service. They help you get on the Internet and assign you a different IP address, but there's a wide range of reliability in providers.

There are many more advantages to using a personal VPN service over a proxy (usability, security, access to blocked sites).

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