Router

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɹuː.tə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. A network device that routes data packets among various segments while managing traffic and connectivity between diverse networks
2. An electronic mechanism that directs incoming and outgoing data between multiple networks, facilitating communication among connected systems
3. A device used in networking to forward data packets to specific destinations, ensuring efficient communication across interconnected network segments and maintaining traffic flow

Etymology: The word "router" has a split personality. Its networking sense is the younger one: a device that forwards data packets between networks, and the term came to describe it only as computer networks grew in the late twentieth century. Its ancestry, though, is an ordinary English agent noun built from "route," which goes back through Anglo-Norman and Old French to Latin "rupta," meaning a broken or beaten road, and ultimately "rumpere," to break. The older sense is the one a woodworker would recognise. In carpentry, a router is a power tool with a rapidly spinning cutter that hollows out grooves and shapes edges in wood. Its name comes from "rout," an older verb meaning to gouge or hollow out, which is a different word from "route" despite the shared sound, and the tool's name reflects the cutting action rather than any travel. Networking borrowed the word for a device that routes traffic along paths, and the two senses now sit side by side in everyday English.

Synonyms: network device, gateway