Technology has been growing at staggering rate and router technology is no exception. It can be difficult to keep up with and there are lots of terms and vocabulary to keep up with as well. To get our feet wet, let's just take a look at the difference between the term "broadband" and "narrowband" with respect to router technology.
Most people became aware of modems before routers. Modems used to be pretty archaic in the early days. The early modem's speed was measured in kilobits per second, abbreviated kbps. Modem technology progressed from 14kbs, to 28kbps, and then to 56kbps. How times have changed. These older modems directly connected to a standard phone 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 made some hints about the difference between broadband and narrowband but what's the real difference? Boiling it down, it's the frequency band over which something can operate. So, broadband routers use a larger range of frequencies than narrowband routers.
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.
Understanding the difference between broadband and narrowband is interesting but how is it important? Well, broadband devices are typically faster! Why?
Let's take another look at our analogy.
Now consider trying to send two streams of data at the same time. Two tuning forks at the same time are hard to tell apart. However two singers at once are easy to differentiate.
Digital devices send ones and zeros. We can think of "ones" as being "on" and "zeros" as being off. We can probably only tell if a tuning fork is on or off (ringing or not) if there is only one. However, we can have many singers at once and we can tell which ones are on and off since they are singing at different frequencies. So, the punchline. Tuning forks are narrowband and can only send one stream of data. Singers are broadband and 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.
Most people became aware of modems before routers. Modems used to be pretty archaic in the early days. The early modem's speed was measured in kilobits per second, abbreviated kbps. Modem technology progressed from 14kbs, to 28kbps, and then to 56kbps. How times have changed. These older modems directly connected to a standard phone 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 made some hints about the difference between broadband and narrowband but what's the real difference? Boiling it down, it's the frequency band over which something can operate. So, broadband routers use a larger range of frequencies than narrowband routers.
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.
Understanding the difference between broadband and narrowband is interesting but how is it important? Well, broadband devices are typically faster! Why?
Let's take another look at our analogy.
Now consider trying to send two streams of data at the same time. Two tuning forks at the same time are hard to tell apart. However two singers at once are easy to differentiate.
Digital devices send ones and zeros. We can think of "ones" as being "on" and "zeros" as being off. We can probably only tell if a tuning fork is on or off (ringing or not) if there is only one. However, we can have many singers at once and we can tell which ones are on and off since they are singing at different frequencies. So, the punchline. Tuning forks are narrowband and can only send one stream of data. Singers are broadband and 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:
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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