What Is a Router? Explained for Kids
Somewhere in your home there is a small box with blinking lights. It might sit on a shelf or behind the TV. That box is a router, and almost everything you do online passes through it.
What does a router do?
A router has two jobs.
It joins your devices together. Phones, tablets, laptops, and game consoles all connect to the router. Most use Wi-Fi. Some use a cable.
It links your home to the Internet. A cable connects the router to your Internet service provider, or ISP. That is the company that connects your home to the rest of the Internet.
In some homes a second box called a modem sits between the router and the cable outside. In others, both are built into one box.
How does it know where things go?
Information on the Internet travels in small pieces called packets. Every packet carries the address of the place it is going.
The router reads that address and passes the packet along. When a reply comes back, the router sends it to the right device. That is how a video reaches your tablet and not your sister’s phone.
The Internet is full of routers
Your home router is only the first stop. The Internet has a great many routers, in buildings all over the world. A packet hops from one to the next until it arrives. The whole trip usually takes less than a second.
Questions to talk about
- Where is the router in your home?
- How many devices in your home connect to it?
- Why does a packet need an address?