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Routers are no exception to the growth experienced by technology as a whole. With all the improvements in these devices it can be difficult to keep up with what is best and the vocabulary and terms required to understand don't help things either. Let's try to understand a little better by looking at what is different between "broadband" and "narrowband" routers.
Modems and routers have been around a little while but most people were first exposed to modems. The first modems look a bit ancient compared to the ones we have now and were measured in kilobits per second or kbps. They moved from 14kbs, to 28kbsp, to 56kbps. Things have changed since then. However, these older modems used to connect to the telephone line and were considered "narrowband".
Routers of course are not modems but they are primarily all broadband. Most of today's routers use broadband high speed internet such as cable or DSL.
We've touched a bit on the subject but what's the real difference between broadband and narrowband? Looking at it in simple terms, it's the frequency band over which a device can operate. A broadband router uses a wider range of frequencies than a narrowband router.
To make the difference clearer we will consider an analogue. We could consider many devices in everyday life but let's choose a tuning fork. A tuning fork resonates at exactly 440Hz (middle A) and no other frequencies, so it is a narrowband device. Now, in comparison with the human voice it is somewhat limited. The human voice can sing at many frequencies and is therefore "broadband". You might summarize this by saying the human voice has a "wider band" of frequencies than a tuning fork.
Now that we've learned a bit about broadband and narrowband what so important about it? Broadband devices are typically a lot faster. Why?
Let's dig in a bit deeper into our analogy to get a better understanding.
To start, let's try to send twice as much data. Let's pretend we have two tuning forks and two singers. If both tuning forks are vibrating it doesn't sound much different than if just one was vibrating since they both ring at middle A. However, if two singers sing different notes it's easy to tell when both singers are singing and when only one is singing.
Similarly, digital devices use ones and zeros. If we think of "ones" and "zeros" as being "on" and "off" respectively we can apply this to tuning forks and singers. Two tuning forks "on" is hard to differentiate from one tuning fork "on" and the other "off". However, it is easy to tell which of two singers is "on" or "off" or even if both are "on". We therefore call tuning forks narrowband since they can only stream one set of data at a time, while the singers can send many streams of data.
Broadband devices can stream a lot more data than narrowband devices. Of course, technologically they are a bit more complicated, which is why historically we started out with narrowband devices and progressed to broadband.
Modems and routers have been around a little while but most people were first exposed to modems. The first modems look a bit ancient compared to the ones we have now and were measured in kilobits per second or kbps. They moved from 14kbs, to 28kbsp, to 56kbps. Things have changed since then. However, these older modems used to connect to the telephone line and were considered "narrowband".
Routers of course are not modems but they are primarily all broadband. Most of today's routers use broadband high speed internet such as cable or DSL.
We've touched a bit on the subject but what's the real difference between broadband and narrowband? Looking at it in simple terms, it's the frequency band over which a device can operate. A broadband router uses a wider range of frequencies than a narrowband router.
To make the difference clearer we will consider an analogue. We could consider many devices in everyday life but let's choose a tuning fork. A tuning fork resonates at exactly 440Hz (middle A) and no other frequencies, so it is a narrowband device. Now, in comparison with the human voice it is somewhat limited. The human voice can sing at many frequencies and is therefore "broadband". You might summarize this by saying the human voice has a "wider band" of frequencies than a tuning fork.
Now that we've learned a bit about broadband and narrowband what so important about it? Broadband devices are typically a lot faster. Why?
Let's dig in a bit deeper into our analogy to get a better understanding.
To start, let's try to send twice as much data. Let's pretend we have two tuning forks and two singers. If both tuning forks are vibrating it doesn't sound much different than if just one was vibrating since they both ring at middle A. However, if two singers sing different notes it's easy to tell when both singers are singing and when only one is singing.
Similarly, digital devices use ones and zeros. If we think of "ones" and "zeros" as being "on" and "off" respectively we can apply this to tuning forks and singers. Two tuning forks "on" is hard to differentiate from one tuning fork "on" and the other "off". However, it is easy to tell which of two singers is "on" or "off" or even if both are "on". We therefore call tuning forks narrowband since they can only stream one set of data at a time, while the singers can send many streams of data.
Broadband devices can stream a lot more data than narrowband devices. Of course, technologically they are a bit more complicated, which is why historically we started out with narrowband devices and progressed to broadband.
About the Author:
If you are looking to buy a router, make sure you check AJ Jensen's excellent free guide to buying a travel router, or check out his small wireless router web site.
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