It’s very common that sometimes you can’t remember the exact word or definition related to router you want to talk about, it happens to other computer information too.
WIFI is surely most used words nowadays, while you go everywhere in public, in a Cafe, in a theater, you will find some wireless router signals, it’s also called WIFI network.
With those routers, you will get an IP address while you connect to them, and routers’ themselves have default gateway IP address, they are consisted of numbers with some dots(for example 192.168.1.1). These numbers are like seats in cinema, your router arrange you one and you can enjoy its functions including surf on internet, share your wireless network, make a NAT network, etc,.
While you connect to your router, you should configure your computer’s network first. Click the property, you will see IP address mask, usually it’s 255.255.255.0 or 255.255.0.0. Then you will see DNS setting, gateway setting. DNS is a public domain resolver center you need to setup, for example, you can use Google’s DNS: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4. Gateway address is also router’s default address.
WAN and LAN. WAN means wide area network, LAN means local area network. If you want to setup a small network group for home-use or office-use, the network can be called LAN network. If a whole area or district build up a network, you can call it WAN network.
Now, you know some basic router knowledge, for more information, you can read a router’s manual, or visit router’s factory website, there are always some more detailed router related knowledge.