by Jules Lister

Created on: July 09, 2009

In the modern age nearly every house has access to the Internet and even more likely to have multiple PC's and Laptops in the same house. Mum and Dad both have their own and perhaps their kids have laptops, gaming machines or even iPod's that can benefit from having access to the Internet.

Before I get to my review of the Netgear Routers there are a few things that you should know about the technical side of what these devices are used for as these are often skipped over and can cause confusion to those who don't understand these things. Don't worry it is not written in techno babble but these are the things that some sale's people forget to mention to you when you pop in to buy one which have a bearing on what you actually need.

Connection to the Internet can generally be obtained in two flavours, a cable modem which is a little device that attaches to your PC or Laptop but is installed by the company you buy the service from, such as used with Virgin Media. The other is via a telephone line through the magic of something called ADSL, which you may or may not want to know stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line and for that you are none the wiser I know, but thats the beauty of it you don't need to know how it works to get access to the Internet.

Depending on which you have will determine the router type you need, you will either a need a Cable Modem Router or an ADSL Modem Router, fairly simple there. What these devices do for you is to share that single connection to the Internet between your many computers or other devices in your home. Don't worry too much about how these actually connect to the Internet as this is rather complex but the beauty is that you don't need to know to use them.

For a cable modem you simply plug the Netgear Router to the Cable Modem using the WAN/Internet port on the back of the router which connects to the Ethernet port on the modem. Certainly on the Netgear products these are marked very clearly.

With an ADSL Router this needs to be plugged in to your phone line along with your normal phone. Very important is that if you have multiple phone outlets in your house then you need to plug a small device in to each one which is called a "micro filter". This plugs into the phone socket and then you plug the phone into this, it is as simple as it sounds, If you don't then anyone who uses the phone will interfere with the connection to the Internet and you will not be able surf the Net whilst they are on the phone. There will usually

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