Understanding Routers: Take A Deep Breath, Then Read
If you've ever filed your own taxes, then you already have the intelligence for understanding routers. You don't need a special degree in Computer Science. Routers are devices that are essential to keeping the Internet running. You need routers if you have DSL or wireless internet. A router is not inside your computer - it's with your internet service provider.
Virtual Traffic Cops And Postal Carriers
Understanding routers is a bit like understanding the job of a traffic cop and a postal carrier, combined. The main job of a router is to get your information, like an email, to the correct computer and not to every other computer in the world. For example, your ISP is RCN and your friend's ISP is Comcast. Your email first goes to RCN's router and them is sent to the Comcast router and then to your friend's inbox. If it wasn't for routers, email or Instant Messaging would not be possible.
Configuration Tables
Understanding routers' ways of doing the magic they do is a little more difficult. Unlike traffic cops or postal clerks, they can't make independent decisions. The reasons they do what they do is because they are programmed to look at certain things and then decide what to do based on a set of programmed instructions.
One of the programmed instructions that help routers understand where messages need to go is called a configuration table. This is a list of rules that tells the router where to send stuff if certain conditions are met, and what to do if the conditions aren't met. It also gives the router it's priorities on what decisions to make first, and what to deal with later.
Understanding routers' configuration tables is a bit like understanding flow charts. If A happens, then you can do B. But if A and C happens, then you go over to this box over here which tells you to do X. If you are not familiar with flow charts, just enter "flow charts" in your favorite search engine and you will see what I'm talking about.
Data Packages
Emails, IMs, even information you want to put on your web page, is recognized in routers' understanding as a data package. It is like a regular package going through real world snail mail. How does a postal worker know where a real package goes? By looking at the label. In a data package's case, the label is called the "wrapper". A wrapper includes the sender's electronic address, the recipient's address and the message or information itself.
