How to choose a great Wi-Fi router for your modern connected home!
Internet has done wonders to our daily lives and now the concept of connected homes are about to impact how we treat our homes as well. Few decades ago, networking was all about connecting few computers in LAN or WAN in a household or maybe two computers located few blocks apart from one another. Almost 3 decades later, now we have smartphones, portable computers, internet-enable smart home gadgets and appliances etc. all of which need fast and reliable wireless internet connectivity all the time.
In 2017, Wi-Fi routers have made it to almost all households. But if your router is quite a few years old, it may not be capable of a modern home concept. If your voice calls over Skype tend to break very often, or the smart TV is taking forever to buffer your Casey Neistat videos, its time you get a new wireless router. The best fit is out there, you only need to know how to look and where to.A lot of parameters are involved
Choosing the right Wi-Fi router will revamp your internet browsing experience. With one great router and great bandwidth on your internet connectivity, you can finally say goodbye to lagging web pages on your smartphone or the high ping on your favorite role playing games. If you had been wondering, yes the online games you play are greatly impacted by your wireless router. Imagine connecting a 2.5 inch diameter water pipe to a 10 inch diameter supply line. That’s sort of similar to connecting a slow 2.4GHz router to a 100 Mbps internet link.
Routers aren’t just Routers
These are in fact, tiny computers. In networking, there are two very basic types of routing devices – switches and routers. A lot of people mix them up together, but they aren’t same. Switches don’t have the necessary brains to differentiate between internet packets and choose which packet needs to go where. They just pass the traffic as the higher hierarchy router tells them to. Routers on the other hand, receive the packets from a source, read their headers and determines the fastest shortest possible path of that packet to the destination and pass it along. Consumer level Wi-Fi routers aren’t exactly the same thing, but the computation logic is quite similar.
Migrate to 5 GHz
If you have a 2.4 GHz router with impeccable performance and strong antennas, even then you may want to get a new router. Switch to 5 GHz frequency for better performance. 2.4GHz is a highly occupied channel; not only your router but even the microwave oven operates in the same frequency. If your oven has a faulty insulation, chances are you shall experience signal distortion while your microwave is running. A lot of other devices with wireless transmission options use the license-free 2.4 GHz channel.
5 GHz is quite free on the other hand. Only a very few routers transmit in 5 GHz. That’s a freer channel with higher potential for faster data transmission. Although 5 GHz is limited to closer proximity as opposed to 2.4 GHz’s long range; maybe that’s another reason why you should buy a dual band router instead of a single 5GHz band router.
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac: not confused yet?
Well, you are. Almost everyone is! These are basically standards defined by IEEE to which all routers must adhere to. 802.11 stands for Wi-Fi and the letters a, b, g, n and ac denote the updates to the papers. 802.11 ac is the latest standard. All these standards are backward compatible, if you have an ‘ac’ router you adhere to all the standards defined by IEEE for wireless connectivity.
Conclusion
All these standards are very important in building your modern connected home. If your Wi-Fi router is as capable as the fast paced world is, you should live trouble free in this century.
