IF you have wireless Internet access at home, you probably have a little box called a router that plugs into your telephone socket. This kind of router is a bit like a sophisticated modem: it’s a standalone computer whose job is to relay connections to and from the Internet.
At your office, you might use a router to connect several computers to the Internet at once (saving on the need for several separate modems). In other words, the router does two jobs: it creates a wireless computer network, linking all your computers together, and it also gives all your machines a shared gateway to the Internet.