Broadband is a necessary component for many aspects of our digital lives. Gaming, watching videos, buying music and surfing the web all depend on it. A whole range of devices and services bring all those bits to you, and two of the components closest to you are the modem and the router.

Modem stands for modulator-demodulator. When Internet use was still relatively new in many households, data was sent over the same copper wires as telephones. However, sending the binary zeros and ones of a data stream over long metal strands is not easy.

Instead, the signal is sent as either high or low. These are translated into the ones and zeros that computers expect. So when you send data, a device has to modulate it to the correct signal strength and demodulate the signals that come back.

A modem, by itself, connects your home to that external network. It is identified by your IP address, which your internet service provider assigns. If your home only has one network device, you can plug it directly into the modem and surf. However, most homes have many network devices, and you need a way to manage their connections to each other and the internet. That’s where a router comes in.