IT, Web
Routing
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Routing
A router is a network device capable of passing data between two networks. The most basic reason for using a router is to connect a LAN to the internet (Lowe, 2013). A bridge on the other hand sits between two types of networks, for example between an Ethernet and wireless (Pomerleau, 2009)
Routers can be helpful under the following circumstances. To begin with, routers are capable of connecting different network architectures such as Ethernet and Token Ring networks and so if it is expected that the LAN network in our case will need to use different network architectures in the future, then routers will be best choice. Second, a router is more efficient than a bridge because a router will process information that is specifically addressed to it where as a bridge processes all messages it receives. Therefore, a router would increase network data processing speed thus will end up with an efficiently working network when using a router than when using a bridge. Next, routers are advantageous in circumstances when an organization needs to communicate to the external environment and therefore routers are capable of connecting to a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the internet (Ogletree 2004). The capacity to connect to the external environment enables the organization to be in contact to the government for information on taxation as well as connection to customers, suppliers and even competitors. Furthermore, routers are efficient at transmission of information from source to destination because they are capable of information directly to the destination devices, thereby reducing the number of intermediary devices a signal has to pass through. Additionally, a router can filter data based on its contents and thereby allowing some data to pass through while blocking some information. This can help monitor data