Computer Science Principles The Internet - 03 Addressing and Routing Information - 05 Routers and directing requests

Routers are the signposts that packets use to travel across the Internet and over private networks within an organization.

Using the header information in data packets, routers read the information in the header to direct packets to go to the right location.

In your home, you might have a router that is connected to your home Internet Service Provider.

When your computer sends out a request for information or is sending packets of information to another computer, the first place the request goes is the router.

The router looks at the information in the header and sees where it needs to send the information.

In a home network, that could be one of two places.

It could be something that is sent out to the Internet to connect to another computer or it could be to another computer or device on your own home network.

When you have a home network, all of your devices including your computers, tablets, phones, game consoles, and even smart devices like light bulbs, wireless speaker systems, and more, are all connected to your router.

This is so you can communicate between these devices without needing to go all the way to the Internet and then back to the device, making it much faster.

It also is private, meaning that none of the information that is sent leaves your home network.

When information does go out to the Internet, it is sent out of your router to your Internet Service Provider and then gets to its destination.

But it can all seem like a black box.

If you look inside, you'll find that the Internet is an incredibly complex system of servers and routers, where a packet navigates through tons of these various systems to get to the destination.

A router also has a component called the configuration table.

This is a set of commands that defines how the router works.

For instance, let's say that you're working in banking and you need to have a backup connection to the Internet if your main connection goes down.

You might have a large connection that manages most of your traffic and then a smaller connection as a backup if the larger one goes down.

If the router finds that the main connection is down, it then routes the packets through the secondary connection to make sure that it can get to the Internet.

Through private and public networks and routers, packets can be sent to computers and devices on your own networks and then traverse the landscape of the public Internet to find its destination.