Picture an island, if you will, in the middle of a large river with many tributaries feeding into it, nourishing the isle.

A wireless router is like that - it forms the heart of a home network, pulling together a slew of gadgets from PC to printer to game console to allow them to go online wirelessly.

Essentially, such a gadget turns your entire house into a wireless zone that streams into one common broadband line for cyberspace cruising.

All said, people gain the freedom to go online from anywhere in their home - untethered to a desk - and still remain connected to the Net.

For the best in wireless routing today, note the alphabets G and N.

My wireless G-router has not been able enough to penetrate the multiple walls that separate my study (where the router is placed) from the living room as well as the bathroom right at the other end of my apartment.

But the wireless N-routers - I tested four new ones - could, boosting both range and speed.

I was impressed. All four N-routers gave me at least two out of five bars in signal strength in both my living room and the bathroom. In fact, walking outof my apartment to the staircase landing next to the lift lobby still got me a single bar.

In speed, I found that I could shorten my download times by half on two of the new N-routers as compared to my old model.

So, for maximum coverage, getting one of these turbo-charged N-routers should be your first choice