The wireless access point and the wireless router are
two devices with different main role in wireless networking.
Before you buy a device to build a wifi network at home then make sure you choose the right device, either you have to buy a wifi router or wifi access point. Today, you may find that mesh wifi router is getting more popular than wifi router in general, one of most popular products is asus zenwifi et12 mesh wifi 6e axe11000 with the addition 6ghz radio band instead of 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands.
What is the main difference
Some people make mistake in buying the correct
wireless devices for building the wifi network in home or small offices. They
frequently make mistake by purchasing the wireless access point instead of the
wireless router to share the internet connection in home. You cannot share the
internet by connecting the wireless access point to the native modem.
Why?
The main difference between the wireless access point
and wireless router lies on the NAT feature (besides many security features the
routers have). Typically the wireless access points do not have the NAT or
firewall feature, but the wireless routers do. What is NAT?
NAT
First thing you need to understand is the basic
concept of network address translation (NAT). NAT is a feature that must exist
on all types of routers. NAT is the primary method to translate the
unregistered IP addresses behind the firewall to a single (or more) registered
IP address to access the internet. NAT functions as an intermediary between a
client computer on an unregistered network (private network) and the public
Internet network.
The figure 1 shows a conceptual diagram how the
computers with the unregistered IP address behind the firewall (in your
internal / private network) access the internet via firewall. The outside
interface of the firewall must use the registered / public IP address.
Generally the registered IP address can be obtained from your Internet Service
Provider (ISP).
The figure 1 shows a conceptual diagram how the
computers with the unregistered IP address behind the firewall (in your
internal / private network) access the internet via firewall. The outside
interface of the firewall must use the registered / public IP address. Generally
the registered IP address can be obtained from your Internet Service Provider
(ISP).
Private and public IP addresses
On the other hand, you must use the public IP
addresses on the interface of the firewall that faces the internet. All the
computers that share the same internet connection behind the firewall will use
a single public IP address to communicate with other computers in the wild
internet. And other computers on the internet will only be able to reach you
via a single public address on the external interface of the firewall. See more
detail about IP NAT here.
The table below shows the range of the private IP
addresses you can use for your internal networks (the network behind the
firewall / router).
|
Class Type
|
Start Address
|
End Address
|
|
Class A
|
10.0.0.0
|
10.255.255.254
|
|
Class B
|
172.16.0.0
|
172.31.255.254
|
|
Class C
|
192.168.0.0
|
192.168.255.254
|
Home wireless routers
Mostly all the wireless routers configure their
default IP addressees using Class C private IP addresses. The following table
shows some of the wireless routers with their default IP addresses that use
Class C private addresses.
|
Router
|
Address
|
Username
|
Password
|
|
Belkin
|
http://192.168.2.1
|
Login
|
(leave blank)
|
|
D-Link
|
http://192.168.0.1
|
admin
|
(leave blank)
|
|
Linksys
|
http://192.168.1.1
|
admin
|
admin
|
|
NETGEAR
|
http://192.168.0.1
|
admin
|
password
|
|
TP-link
|
http://192.168.1.1
|
admin
|
admin
|
The wireless routers have the firewall (NAT) function
to translate many computers behind the router to a single registered IP address
to enable the internet communication. While the wireless access points do not
have the NAT function, so they cannot share a single registered IP address from
the ISP with many computers behind the access points (when the Access point is
connected directly to the native modem).
Before you purchase either the wireless router or the
wireless access point, you should examine if your existing modem is a native
modem (which does not have the firewall function or NAT feature such as DOCSIS
3.0 SB6190 Cable modem) or a gateway – a compact router / firewall with
built-in modem such as Motorola mg8725 ax6000 with built-in docsis 3.1 cable modem.
However, some types of wireless routers can also be configured to
function as the wireless access point, for example Asus RT-ax89u router and other Asus router series, Netgear high end routers such as Nighthawk raxe500 axe11000 etc. You need to connect the wifi router to the existing network and configure your router to act as the wireless access point.
If you setup the wireless access point by connecting
it to the native modem, there will only be one computer that can connect to the
internet in a time. You should connect the wireless router to the native modem
to share the internet.
See also : Linksys Velop mesh wifi system or Orbi Pro for businesses.
Cheers, Ali H
