Podcast response: What is a router?

Blog post 2: response to How Stuff Works podcast, What it is a router?

This was an interesting, informative, and useful podcast. It served as a helpful refresher on how critical routers are for home, private, and public networks and obviously the internet. (after all "there would be no internet without routers" as the podcast candidly indicated). I also enjoyed their perspective on network address translation. With the emergence of IPv6, maybe one day all public and private IP addresses will be unique.

One common misconception on routers that I've experienced is that any device with any RJ-45
or ethernet port (that isn't obviously a desktop PC or laptop) gets lumped into the server or router category. While these two devices are both critical pieces of information technology infrastructure, they are vastly different from each other as well as from network switches, wireless access points, or cable modems.

This leads me to wonder about the following chicken and egg type question.....

• what is more critical for internet infrastructure--servers or routers?

I welcome your feedback and perspectives. By the way, I won't be surprised if the system admins vote for servers and the network guys/gals vote for routers. :)

 Discuss.