Saturday, July 19, 2008

Routed by a generation gap

Gus is spending several weeks on a backwater canoe trip, but before he left we had one of those father-son conversations that, well, makes me feel old.

He asked me what a router is, and I smiled, happy to impart some of my woodworking wisdom. I don't do so much anymore, but I used to do woodworking as a hobby, so I explained to him what a router does. Basically, it hollows out a piece of wood.

About 2 or 3 minutes into the explanation, he looked at me really funny and said, "no Dad, like a computer router." Oops... I had no idea.

2 comments:

Jason Kinney said...

Router: A device that finds the best path for a data packet to be sent from one network to another. A router stores and forwards electronic messages between networks, first determining all possible paths to the destination address and then picking the most expedient route, based on the traffic load and the number of hops.

I hope that helps. More information on packets and hops, etc, can be found in this glossary:

http://www.cobaltquarter.co.uk/about_cobaltquarter_marketing/glossary.html

Brad Wright said...

Thanks Jason, I'll pass it along to Gus.