Router Reviews

First we are going to know what a cable router is. After that we present you working of a cable router and how to purchase a good cable router for your business. To help out you, we bring here, the reviews of many popular cable routers, so that you can compare different cable routers and find better one for your business.

What is a Cable Router?
If a high speed cable internet is present in your house, it means that you are using a cable router. A cable modem plugs into the cable coming from the wall, and then the cable router plugs into the modem, to transfer the signal to your home computers.
A cable router connects two different networks. Suppose there is a cable company, which has a network that includes your Internet connection and your home computer (or computers) is the other network. The cable router connects these two networks and allows them to share the information.

Working of a Cable Router
The information includes different types of data, which is sent between your PC and the cable Internet service provider (ISP). The cable router helps to route the data towards the correct destination.

For example, if there are two computers on your home network, and you are using first computer to access the shared files of the second computer, then the cable router gets the request from the first computer and routes it to the second computer. If the second computer tries to view the web page, the cable router sends this request to the ISP. When ISP sends the web page information back, the cable router transfers it to the second computer.

Purchasing a Cable Router
There are several things, to be considered while purchasing a cable router.

• Choose a router that contains the security features, like firewall. The firewall secures your home computers from the intruders and hackers to protect your network. Some cable routers have their own firewall. If you have software firewall installed on your PC then there is no need of hardware firewall on your cable router.
• Choose a cable router that support CAT5 as well as CAT6 cables. Wired cable router is appropriate for the computers which are closer to the cable router.
  If the computers are so far, the wires may loose the signal and the long running cables make home messy.
• If there are multiple computers, or the computers are at different places on different floors then a wireless cable router might be a good option.
• There are several popular manufactures of cable routers such as Linksys, Netgear, etc.

Linksys BEFSR41 4 Port Cable Router
This is the perfect solution to connect multiple computers on the broadband Internet connection or to an Ethernet backbone. It contains built in NAT technology which acts as a firewall and protects your network from hackers. You can configure it as a DHCP server on your local area network (LAN). Also you can block the access of internet to the internal user. It comes with two year manufacturer’s warrantee.

Netgear RP614 4 Port Cable Router
This is ideal or setting up a shared broadband connection. It contains a built in Network address translation (NAT) technology and a firewall with stateful packet inspection (SPI) to protect your network from internet hackers. Also it features DHCP support, DMZ hosting, Virtual Private Network pass-through. It is compatible with windows, Mac, and Linux or Unix systems.

Linksys WRT54G 4-Port 54Mbps Wireless Cable Router
The router supports network address translation, WEP and WPA-PSK to secure the network. Also it provides 10Mbps WAN port, VPN pass-through, DMZ hosting, web based and remote configuration, 2 fixed antennas. It has its UPnP enabled and comes with three year warrantee.