Do you know what a router is?

In the early morning of the Tang Dynasty, a fast horse galloped along the main road of the empire, which was an 800 mile express service used in emergency situations. The battle ahead is tight, and the information on the situation urgently needs to be sent to the capital. At every post station on the way, people and horses need to be changed, and the daily journey is 800 miles without any delay. Even so, it would take several days for the emperor to receive the information, and I don't know how many horses died from exhaustion during the journey.

In the 19th century, with the invention of telegraphy, telephone, and fax, the efficiency of information transmission has greatly improved. However, how to transmit large amounts of data information in real-time remains a challenge. It was not until the birth of the Internet in the 1990s that large-scale data information could be transmitted in real-time through the network. In the Internet, there is a device silently responsible for forwarding data information, which is the protagonist we will talk about today - the router.

A router is a hardware device that connects two or more networks and acts as a gateway between them. It determines how to transmit by reading the IP address in each packet. One function of a router is to connect different networks, and the other function is to select the optimal route for information transmission. WiFi 5 Ceiling Wireless AP

Just to say that the concept is probably too abstract, let's start from the familiar internet speed and take a look at the development and changes of routers in the network era!

In 1994, China was officially recognized as a country with a fully functional Internet through a 64K international dedicated line, marking the beginning of China's Internet era. At the beginning, the Internet was mainly used by universities and research institutes as a research tool for academic exploration. With the rise of portal websites such as Sina, Sohu, and NetEase, more and more ordinary people are using portal websites to access the Internet. At that time, most netizens used modems (also known as "cats") to dial up the internet through phone lines.

With the creaking sound of a "cat", after waiting for a minute or two, the computer finally connected to the internet, and netizens began to enjoy a super "slow" speed of 56 kbps. The high cost of 6 yuan/hour makes surfing the internet a very luxurious thing. The online posture for smart netizens to unlock is as follows: after dialing up to access the internet, quickly open all the web pages you want to see, then disconnect from the network, and then carefully read the content of the webpage.

At that time, there was usually only one computer at home that connected to the internet, and we couldn't use a home router, so we didn't have much concept of a router. But in fact, there are routers in the network, which are only used in the operator's network, and we cannot feel it. Wifi 6 Ceiling Wireless Ap

Routers in the operator's network mainly provide 10M or 100M Ethernet interfaces for PSTN access, and set up an X.25 or Frame Relay wide area network to take the role of data forwarding. They calculate the optimal path through OSPF, BGP and other routing protocols, and use the longest matching and one by one forwarding methods to send data packets to the destination. Wall Ap Wireless Ap

After several more years, ADSL finally emerged. ADSL can be said to be the leader in broadband access. Compared to Modem dialing, it can achieve a broadband access speed of 1 Mbps for uplink and 8 Mbps for downlink. This not only greatly improves the internet speed, but also allows for making phone calls while accessing the internet.

At that time, ADSL dial-up internet was very avant-garde. Anyone in the village who used ADSL dial-up internet was definitely leading the trend. Walking on the road, they would always accept the envious gaze of others. After ADSL, more dial-up Internet access methods based on DSL technology have emerged, such as ADSL2, ADSL2+, VDSL, VDSL+, etc. We collectively call them xDSL (digital subscriber line).

XDSL utilizes signal processing techniques to add or obtain more digital data in analog circuits to achieve high transmission rates (theoretical values can reach 52 Mbps). With the development of the internet, there is no pressure to flirt with a netizen or watch a video at home. What improvements have been made to routers in operator networks behind the rapid forwarding of data?

At this time, routers were also upgraded, and the access side interfaces were upgraded from 10 or 100 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, resulting in a corresponding upgrade of network bandwidth to Gigabit Ethernet. At the same time, the router has been upgraded from supporting only X.25 or Frame Relay to supporting ATM. ATM is a cell based packet switching technology that uses fixed length labels and only needs to maintain a label table that is much smaller than the routing table. Compared with IP routing, the forwarding performance is greatly improved. The bandwidth of the wide area network has also greatly increased, reaching up to 622 Mbps, which can already meet the online experience of most netizens.

What truly gives netizens the feeling of reaching their peak in life is the current era of fiber optic access (PON). Compared to xDSL, PON networks can achieve the highest gigabit network access speed. High definition videos, online games, all stress free, and ultra high internet speed make you feel incredibly cool. In the scorching summer, with air conditioning, Wi Fi, and watermelon, you can fully experience a comfortable life.

When it comes to Wi Fi, it has to be said that almost every household has a Wireless Router. Nowadays, every household has multiple devices (computers, phones, PADs, etc.) that need to access the internet, and home wireless routers are naturally indispensable. In fact, in order for data to be transmitted over a wide area network, it is necessary to use telecom grade routers used by operators as mentioned earlier.

The wireless router is like combining the wireless AP and the broadband router. It not only has the wireless coverage function of the wireless AP, but also can realize all the functions of the broadband router, realize Internet connection sharing in the home network, and realize wireless shared access based on xDSL, PON network, or cell broadband access.

The wireless router integrates router function, firewall function, bandwidth management function, broadband Ethernet WAN interface, and built-in multiple 10/100/1000Mbps interfaces as well as 2.4GHz or 5GHz wireless frequency bands. It provides both wired access and wireless access methods, which can be used not only in homes, but also in offices, enterprises, and other occasions.

If wireless routers are well-known martial arts experts, telecom grade routers are deeply hidden "sweeping monks". They reside in major telecom computer rooms and are rarely seen by anyone except professionals who occasionally see their true colors. Faced with the demand for rapid forwarding of massive data, telecom grade routers are constantly keeping up with the times, greatly improving both functionality and performance.

Functionally, routers have begun to support MPLS on a large scale, overcoming the limitations of expensive ATM costs and limited bandwidth in wide area networks. MPLS is independent of the second and third layer protocols, mapping IP addresses to simple fixed length labels. When forwarding data, it only analyzes IP packets at the network edge, without analyzing them at every hop, thus saving processing time.

In terms of performance, the access side interface of the router (the interface between the router and BRAS) has been upgraded to a 10G or 40G Ethernet interface. MPLS can combine the advantages of ATM and IP technology, providing high-performance similar to ATM technology while maintaining the simplicity of IP technology. MPLS has no bandwidth restrictions, and the single port bandwidth capability of wide area networks has been increased to 100Gbps.

In line with the development of 5G, large video/VR/AR, mobile internet, intelligent Internet of Things, and cloud computing, routers will continue to be updated and upgraded, with high-capacity, high-performance, full service router products, cluster routers, virtualization routers, and other products emerging one after another. Larger capacity, higher performance, more flexible operation and maintenance, routers, the future is foreseeable!