Lesson 2
What Each Box Does
Name the box on the wall, the hub and its ports, and know what your type of broadband sets.
Four jobs in one or two boxes
Look behind the TV or in the hall cupboard. You may find a small white box on the wall with a thin cable coming out of the skirting, a larger hub with a row of lights, and perhaps a phone plugged into the back of it.
Between them they do four jobs: bring the provider’s signal into the house, route traffic between your home and the outside world, connect wired devices, and broadcast Wi-Fi. Some homes do all four in one box; others split them across two or three. Knowing which box does which job tells you where each one sits in the chain from Wi-Fi or Internet? Find the Broken Link, and which leads to leave alone.