What are the differences between Router, Gateway and Modem?
You may hear more than one term about network products. Router, Modem, Gateway. It can create confusion when used in similar projects. The Teltonika Networks brand is most famous for its Router models. Then this; Is it a fancy thing to launch products with different names or do these names really help us understand the differences?
In this blog post, we aim to explain the functional differences between them correctly.
What is a Modem?
Let's start with mods first. Modem is one of the oldest terms among networking products. Modems are simple devices that are used to perform only one task as a working principle. It provides this by sending data from point A to point B. For this reason, modems do not have data security or data routing features.
What is Router?
As we mentioned above, Modems are one of the simplest network products. What about Router?
Routers are one of the most advanced devices. It is used to provide and manage internet connection like modems. In fact, we can say that every router is a modem, but this is the only similarity point, things will gain a different dimension from this point on.
If you own a router, you don't need another device to control it. The most striking feature of routers can provide internet connection to more than one device. Multiple devices and the ability to manage other devices connected to the devices allow Routers to adapt to many different usage scenarios. The biggest difference brought by this integrated working principle is the software functionality.
Routers generally work with data security features such as firewall and VPN. These features protect your data as a whole and minimize the risk of cyber attacks.
As a result of all this, Routers can be defined as devices that provide secure internet connection to multiple devices at the same time.
What is Gateway?
Finally, we will examine Gateway devices. Gateway is a commonly used term when talking about Network products, but is often misused. Gateways are often confused with Routers because they are very similar. When you look at the way these two devices work, you can find many similar points. Both work with extensive security measures such as VPN and Tunnel.
If we come to the point where they differ, the main difference between them is as follows; While routers are used to manage multiple devices, Gateway devices are usually designed to manage a single device.
I hope that this blog post will make it easier for you to distinguish between what different devices are used for in different scenarios and the differences between them.