Connecting Remote Networks With Wireless Routers
A network is a group of computers that are connected to each other for means of file sharing and resource sharing. Networks can be wired or wireless. In the case of wired networks, the computers are connected by means of wires, and data flows through these wires. For this, the computers have to be located close to each other, in close proximity of each other. This is called a local area network (LAN). In a wireless network, remote computers can be connected to each other. This allows for greater flexibility of the network. Since the computers are not wired to each other, high distance connections and portable connections are possible. The technology that allows such connections to take place is called Wireless Fidelity, or WiFi. Wireless networks follow the IEEE 802.11 standards. Some of the important terms to know about wireless networks are station, access point, basic service set, extended service set, portal and distributed system. A station is a node or a computer in a wireless network. A basic service set (BSS) consists of several stations connected to each other. An access point is also a station but it has added functionality in the sense that it is used to connect from the BSS to other BSSs. An extended service set is the combination of several BSSs that are connected to each other by means of access points. A portal is used to connect the wireless networks to other networks, like wired PSTN networks, etc. A distributed system is the collection of all the above mentioned components. Wireless network routers connect remote networks with each other. For example, when a node from a network A wants to send some data to a node in network B, network A and network B must be connected my means of a router. Then, the data packet is sent from the node in network A to the router, which forwards the packet to the destination node in network B. This way, routers connect remote networks with each other. The following diagram will illustrate the scenario.
There are four nodes namely host0, host1, host2 and host 3. They are not connected to each other directly but connected by means of routers. For example, host0 and host1 are connected by router0. Host0 and host2 are connected by both router0 and router1 which are connected to each other. Now when host0 wants to send data to host2, it sends the data to the router0, which forwards the data to router2. Router2 forwards this data to host2. Thus data transfer takes place with the use of routers. The use of routers makes network connections more flexible and dynamic. Since routers can be easily setup and configured, nodes can be added dynamically to a network at anytime by connecting to a router in the network. An example of a wireless network router is the D-Link DIR655 router. It has a robust framework and a rich feature set including good quality of service monitoring. It is very effective for transferring data over short distances. The speed achieved by the router is high, hence it is effective for short distance packet transmission. One pitfall about this router is the complex interface that requires a specialist to configure it. Also, there is no facility to share a printer or an external storage device. However, it has Gigabit LAN ports, hence making it fast for data transfer. It is more expensive compared to other routers, though. |
