Hi SnT,
The flaw was that routers would become obsolete with wireless becoming prevalent. I saw that you were given some info on routers, so I won't go into that.
The communications equipment architecture is broken up into 7 layers; Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation and Application.
Routers are at the Network layer and they are the traffic cops that can see inside the packet and determine whether the traffic needs to stay local or go out over the Wide Area Network. The main idea here is that when you send stuff outside of your local area network, bandwidth becomes precious and expensive so you don't want to be sending stuff that doesn't need to be sent.
I am going to skip the data link layer and move to the physical layer.
The physical layer defines the actual connections, physical medium and electrical characteristics of the signal. A router can have a number of different types of physical layer connections, including copper (T1, DS3, V.35, RS-422), Fiber Optic (OC3) or even wireless.
The point is that you can have network that is completely wireless and still need routers because the bandwidth is still precious over that particular link.
You can assume that I have a bias since I work at CSCO (but I speak the truth)
JXM |
