Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

Wi-Fi and Internet are two very different things.

With the popularity of wireless networking, the term Wi-Fi is often synonymous with access to the Internet. In fact, our seasoned editor Scott Stein compared how fast the new iPhone 5's 4G LTE Internet speed was with his "home Wi-Fi," which is a skewed comparison at best. To be fair, most of us use "Wi-Fi" as a shortcut to mean our home broadband Internet connection, and Scott just … Read more

Power users now have another option for their home Wi-Fi networks.

Trendnet announced today the availability of the AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router (model TEW-812DRU). This router was first showcased at CES 2013 and is the first from Trendnet to support the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard.

The TEW-812DRU router is a true dual-band router that offers a maximum wireless speed of up to 450Mbps on the 2.4GHz frequency band, while at the same time offering up to 1,300Mbps speed on the 5GHz band. To take advantage of the new and much faster speed, the wireless clients also … Read more

Pope Benedict XVI might have only joined Twitter in December, but he's already saying so long to the social network.

According to CNN, Vatican Radio announced today that the Pope's postings on @Pontifex will officially end on February 28 when he ends his reign as the leader of the Catholic Church. Vatican Radio reportedly said that Benedict's last tweet will come on February 27.

It's no surprise that the Pope's tweets will be ending. Earlier this month, Benedict announced that he'd be resigning from the papacy at the end of the month due to … Read more

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin isn't convinced that the social network's fast-growth strategy is a good one.

Speaking at a conference in Singapore today, Saverin said that while growth is a "huge asset," it can lead to a very real problem that shouldn't be overlooked.

"The biggest risk is growing too fast," he said, according to Bloomberg, who had a reporter at the event. "When you grow too fast, it's hard to iterate, educate."

Facebook is making no secret that it wants to grow as quickly as possible. Last month, CEO … Read more

Facebook has won an important ruling on its ban of pseudonyms across its social network.

A German court yesterday ruled that it had no jurisdiction over Facebook because its European headquarters are in Ireland and therefore, could not offer an opinion on the social network's pseudonym use. The Associated Press was first to report on the court's ruling.

The court's ruling comes just two months after data protection agency Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz (ULD) in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein ordered Facebook to allow for its users to employ pseudonyms. The company has a policy that … Read more

Being the person in charge of the Networking category, I've received many e-mails asking what my current personal router is, and how often I change it.

Even though I've worked with many routers -- in fact, I have reviewed most of the existing Wi-Fi routers on the U.S. market -- I don't change my home router very often. This is mostly because programing a router can be a tedious task, and I use a lot of different applications and services with many clients, all of which require different settings in the router's firmware.

That said, since the Wireless-N (802.11n) standard was introduced in 2007, I've used just about five Wi-Fi routers. Most of them them have served me very well over the years and I still have them all, except for one that was broken during a move.

The following is the list of those routers and how they've worked out for me.… Read more

Twitter is tops when it comes to social network mentions in Super Bowl commercials.

The social network was mentioned in 26 of 52 national television commercials at the Super Bowl last night, according to a tally from Marketing Land's Matt McGee. Facebook mustered four mentions in the commercials, followed by one each for Instagram and YouTube. Google+ got no mentions.

In order to arrive at his tally, McGee started counting only after the opening kickoff. He stopped counting when the clock reached 0:00. Only national commercials were included, and anything from the NFL or CBS promoting their own … Read more

Some Facebook users can now go beyond simply updating their status -- they can put an emoticon on the moment.

Facebook last night rolled out what it's calling "a really small test" across its Web site and mobile app that lets users pick from an array of emoticons -- smiley faces and other little bits of graphic art that have now been around for some 30 years -- to express how they're feeling at any given moment.

TechCrunch was first to report on the feature.

Facebook provided CNET with screenshots of the emoticon feature in action. … Read more

Facebook shares are down today, spelling some possible erosion in the stock price heading into the rest of the week of trading.

Shares in the big social network are down 3.5 percent today to $30.13 in early trading. The company's stock ended the day yesterday at $31.24, up significantly from the company's 52-week low of $17.55. That rally has been due to Facebook's ability to gain traction in mobile and reassure investors that it could continue to grow.

The company went a long way in making its case yesterday, reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. … Read more