Generally, the primary system on a chip (SoC) that a wireless router is constructed around has one or more network interface controllers supporting Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet ports embedded into it. IEEE 802.1Q describes an Ethernet switch that can link more than one port. Link aggregation is a feature of certain routers that allows for the simultaneous usage of two or more ports, increasing performance and redundancy.
There is a wireless network interface controller on every wireless router. Possibly independent chips on the printed circuit board, these are also incorporated into the main SoC. A separate card linked via a MiniPCI or MiniPCIe interface is another option. A few wireless routers with dual bands function on both the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands concurrently. Some dual-band wireless routers have data transmission speeds surpassing 300 Mbit/s (for the 2.4 GHz band) and 450 Mbit/s (for the 5 GHz band). Wireless controllers support a portion of the IEEE 802.11 standard family. Several wireless routers have several streams, enabling a range of data transfer speeds (for example, a three-stream wireless router may support 5 GHz band transfers of up to 1.3 Gbit/s).
One or two USB ports can be found on some wireless routers. These may be used to link external hard drives, printers, desktop computers, and mobile devices so they can be shared resources on a network. Apart from connecting the wireless router to an Ethernet with xDSL or cable modem, a USB port may also be utilized to connect a mobile broadband modem. To share a mobile broadband Internet connection over a wireless network, a mobile broadband USB adapter may be attached to the router. A fiber optic, DOCSIS, LTE, or xDSL modem may be incorporated into certain wireless routers.
