What are the router buying tips?

Before introducing the router purchase tips for everyone, let's explain the concept of the router. The router is a device that connects to various LANs and WANs in the Internet. It automatically selects and sets routes according to the channel conditions. The path sends the signals in order. The router is the hub of the Internet, "traffic police." At present, routers have been widely used in various industries, and various grades of products have become the main force for realizing internal connections of various backbone networks, interconnecting backbone networks, and backbone network and Internet interconnection services. The main difference between a route and a switch is that the switch occurs at the second layer (data link layer) of the OSI reference model, and the route occurs at the third layer, the network layer. This difference determines that routing and switches need to use different control information in the process of moving information, so the way they implement their respective functions is different.

A router, also known as a gateway, is used to connect multiple logically separate networks. A logical network is a single network or a subnet. When data is transferred from one subnet to another, it can be done through the routing function of the router. Therefore, the router has the function of judging the network address and selecting the IP path. It can establish a flexible connection in a multi-network interconnection environment, and can connect various subnets by completely different data packets and media access methods, and the router only accepts the source station or The information of other routers is an interconnected device at the network layer.

Router shopping tips

When selecting a router, pay attention to security, control software, network expansion capabilities, network management system, and hot swap capability.

1. Since the router is a relatively critical device in the network, the router must have the following security features for various security risks:

(1) Reliability and line safety reliability requirements are proposed for fault recovery and load capacity. For routers, reliability is mainly reflected in the two cases of interface failure and network traffic increase. For this reason, backup is one of the indispensable means of routers. When the primary interface fails, the backup interface is automatically put into operation to ensure the normal operation of the network. When the network traffic increases, the backup interface can take the task of load sharing.

(2) The identity authentication in the identity authentication router mainly includes identity authentication when accessing the router, identity authentication of the peer router, and identity authentication of the routing information.

(3) Access Control For access control of the router, it is necessary to perform hierarchical protection of the password. There are IP address based access control and user based access control.

(4) When information hiding and peer communication, it is not necessary to communicate with the real identity. Through address translation, you can hide the intranet address and access the external network only by public address. In addition to the connection initiated first by the internal network, users outside the network cannot directly access the resources in the network through address translation.

(5) Data encryption

In order to avoid information leakage caused by data eavesdropping, it is necessary to encrypt the transmitted information, and only the peer communicating with it can decrypt the ciphertext. By encrypting the packets sent by the router, even if it is transmitted over the Internet, the privacy, integrity, and authenticity of the message content can be guaranteed.

(6) Attack detection and prevention

As an external interface device of the internal network, the router is the first target of the attacker to enter the internal network. If the router does not provide attack detection and prevention, it is also a bridge for the attacker to enter the internal network. Provide attack detection on the router to prevent some attacks.

(7) Security management

Each data packet between the internal network and the external network passes through the router. The audit of the packet on the router can provide the necessary information for the network to run, which helps to analyze the operation of the network.

The survey shows that wireless routers are also becoming a tool used by hackers to attack and threaten users' access to the Internet and privacy. Seventy percent of users are concerned about router security issues. 63% of users are most worried about stealing online banking payment accounts after being controlled by hackers, 61% of users worry about being implanted with Trojan horse virus, and 44% and 43% of users are watching network phenomenon and hackers monitoring users' online privacy through control routers. The behavior expressed concern.

2. The router's control software is a key part of the router's function. From software installation, automatic parameter setting, to software version upgrade are essential. The more convenient the software installation, parameter setting and debugging, the easier it is for the user to use and the better.

3. With the gradual increase of computer network applications, the existing network scale may not meet the actual needs, and there will be requirements for expanding the network scale. Therefore, the expansion capability is a network that must be considered in the design and construction process. The size of the expansion capability mainly depends on the number of expansion slots supported by the router or the number of expansion ports.

4. With the construction of the network, the network scale will become larger and larger, and the maintenance and management of the network will be more difficult. Therefore, network management is particularly important.

5. In the process of installing, debugging, overhauling and maintaining or expanding the computer network, it is inevitable to add or remove devices to the network, which means that network components may be plugged and unplugged. Whether the router can support hot swap is an important performance indicator of the router.

Router size purchase

If the network has completed building-level cabling, the project requires centralized management of the network equipment. You should choose a 19-inch wide rack router, such as Cisco 2509 and Huawei 2501 (configured with Cisco 2501). Without the above requirements, desktop routers such as Intel's 8100 and Cisco's 1600 series have higher performance-price ratios.

Purchase of router protocol

Since the original LAN did not come out of the standard first, many manufacturers such as Apple and IBM have proposed their own standards, resulting in such protocols as AppleTalk and IBM, Novell's network operating system running IPX/SPX protocol, connecting these different A router is required to support these protocols when constructing a network. The Intel 9100 Series and 9200 Series routers offer free support, and 3Com's family of routing products also offer a wider range of protocol support.

The router acts as a "black box" in the network device and works in the background. When users choose routers, they are more technically considered, such as scalability, routing protocol interoperability, wide-area data service support, internal ATM support, and SAN integration capabilities. In addition, the choice of routers should also follow the following basic principles: the standardization principle, the technical simplicity principle, the environmental adaptability principle, the manageability principle and the fault tolerance redundancy principle. For high-end routers, more should also consider whether and how to adapt to the high-performance requirements of the backbone network for network high reliability, high interface scalability, and route lookup and data forwarding. The “three highs” feature of high reliability, high scalability and high performance is the key to distinguishing high-end routers from medium and low-end routers.