Know about 5 important features of your Wireless Router
A Wi-Fi router is not just a device for connecting to the internet. The main function of a router is to let the user access the internet wirelessly, without the need of any fussy wires. However, a wireless router is a lot more than that. You can play with its different functions to get a much diverse experience of wireless browsing. This article highliaghts five common but useful features of a wireless router with which you can have a delightful session of internet surfing.
Read on to know more.
Security Encryption
For your home network, you may choose between the either, depending on your requirement. Most people prefer WPA-2, though. Whenever you set up a wireless router, ensure that it is properly secured. Compromising with security can lead unauthorized users to intrude your network, consume bandwidth and perform illegal activities.
MAC Address filtering
MAC address is a unique identifier that is found in every networked device. All smartphones, tablets, gaming devices, etc that can connect to the internet wirelessly have a unique MAC address.
MAC filtering is thus a process which refuses permission to chosen devices that attempts to connect to your Wi-Fi router. Modern routers allow the user to individually select MAC addresses that are to be permitted or prevented from connecting while the older ones come up with a set of MAC addresses to be allowed or filtered.
For better security, it is recommended that you allow only MAC addresses to gain access to the router. However, this could give rise to certain issues especially when a relative or friend of yours tries to connect via the internet. It is rather easy to restrict someone to access your wireless router by filtering his MAC address.
Port Forwarding
Every fragment of data that is routed through the internet has a destination IP address and a specific port. It is the port that differentiates one data packet from the other. Two data packets may have the same destination but will never have the same port.
In case of a wireless connection, the data packets are directed to the IP address of the router. Thus, when your system receives data, it is received after the router directs the data to the system. Most routers are programmed to do this automatically but some of them might require the port so that data is directed manually.
There are some applications that use less common ports and thus require port forwarding. The same is applicable for server hosts. You are advised to keep a track of any sort of failure in connection. The router ports might need to be forwarded to sort it out.
Quality of Service and Wi-Fi multimedia
As long as you are hooked on to the internet, different forms of data will reach your wireless router. Web pages, video streams, music, games, e-mails and several other forms of data are bound for the router before reaching your system. During such occasions, users might want to prioritize data packets in accordance to the requirements. The terminology used to denote this is known as Quality of Service.
Applying Quality of Service, you can allot higher bandwidth to data in the form of web pages over video streams, as an example. This way, the router will direct the data having higher bandwidth allotted to the computer before the low bandwidth ones.
On the other hand, Wi-Fi multimedia is a particular kind of Quality of Service related to multimedia. It is easier to apply, with just two options for enabling and disabling. This feature is used to upgrade the performance of multimedia. The technology used in Wi-Fi multimedia is in its nascent stage and is recommended for users who work with a lot of multimedia content.
Guest access
Suppose you have invited a person over who wants to access the internet. What majority of the people does is give away the router password to the person, trusting him/her. However, it’s not a good practice as users are giving the person access to the wireless router and subsequently, to all the gadgets that are connected to it. Instead, an alternative can be chosen which allows visitors to access the internet in a much secured manner.
Guest access is a functionality of wireless routers which allows people to access the internet over a wireless network with certain limitations. It does not allow visitors to connect to other devices that are linked to the router. This way, you can have better security of your wireless network.
Wireless routers are common devices in households and offices these days. It lets you browse from a stipulated distance, thus making for a comfortable browsing session. Applying the features discussed in this article, you can ensure optimum usage of your wireless router in a secured environment.