English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

For my first research blog, I wanted to look at a few different articles and try to identify the main specifications (and the different levels of these specifications) that are important to look at when comparing routers. All of this research will be useful in crafting the introduction.

From a consumer reports article and an about.com article on wireless routers, it seems the following are the most commonly compared aspects of routers for home use (a few are grouped together because of similarity):
• Price
• Speed/Standards
• Size/weight/style
• Ports
• Firewall features
• Protocols/security supported
• Range
• Additional features

This list of features could be integrated into our white paper as part of a sidebar or breakout box for quick referencing.

Obviously, price gets compared in a cost-benefit analysis. You can spend more money and get a higher-speed router, but you may not need the high-speed capabilities. Size, weight, and style won’t necessarily have any clear-cut benefits or drawbacks either; the preference would depend on the individual consumer.

The other features don’t necessarily have obvious options, and I will need to research further into what the differences are and why they might be important.
For example, all of the routers we are comparing have two speeds – IEEE 802.3/3u or 802.11b/g. I will need to look into the differences in these speeds and see what our audience (salespersons) might need to know about them.

Firewall features is another category that seems to have a lot of options. Routers support Network Address Translation (NAT), SPI, VPN and denial of service protection features. It would be a good idea to present some information in the introduction about the differences in these features and the costs/benefits of each.

It seems that most of the routers have WPA, WPA2, 128-bit and/or WEP encryption as different security options. Salespeople should understand the different in these, so it will also be important to find more information on them later.

As for additional features, those will depend on the specific routers, but the articles point out to look at what each router offers that is unique.

Most of this research will be most useful when it is integrated into the introduction of our White Paper as text explaining the importance of all these features.