What is the difference between wireless router vs. wireless gateway?
Wikipedia’s entry on wireless gateway is bang on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_gateway Technically, what most folks buy for their wireless home network is a wireless gateway, because it contains a wireless access point, a router (for NAT), and often provides firewall functionality. But many people call these boxes wireless routers. It’s a terminology mistake thanks to the marketers of consumer products and consumer mis-information. Most anything else is just an wireless access point (WAP).
a wireless router allows wireless access to and internet connection, whereas a gateway also allows you to link to a wirelessly to a wired network in the same way as an access point, basically they are a both a router an an access point. a wireless gateway often has 1 or more ethernet ports, allowing you to connect it to your wired network. if it has no ethernet socket at all it is just a router.
