Difference between a router and a modem

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

Soldato
Joined
29 Sep 2003
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Newcastle upon Tyne
Hi all

I have a friend who unfortunately lives in Hull, so can only get Karoo broadband. Their website clearly states that you will receive an 'inclusive router' on signing up to their services. However, this 'router' they send has only a single LAN socket, and isn't wifi either, meaning you can only ever connect one device. To me, this is a modem, not a router. What are your thoughts?

Thanks

Michael.
 
There are routers with just a single interface. This way you can connect a switch up and if it is indeed a router then it'll do NAT which means all devices plugged into the switch will get Internet access also.

If it's a modem then it won't do NAT which means only one device can ever get Internet access, regardless of however many are hooked up to a switch first.
 
Essentially a modem will allow you to join a network and router will join two networks together.

If it were a modem you would have a public IP address assigned to your device. A router will, like Phemo says use NAT and allow you to have an internal network.
 
paradigm said:
That's mostly because you've only seen consumer level hardware before. I can reel off a rather large list of corporate level hardware that only has one ethernet port.
Click to expand...

This is a consumer router! It's a Thomson Speedtouch ST510 as supplied by an ISP.
 
I wasn't saying that it was only corporate hardware that had a single LAN interface, just that it was more common.

Most of the devices that are touted as "routers" to consumers aren't really just routers at all in the common sense.
 
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