Which router to buy according to your needs
The router is usually the biggest forgotten of our digital homes. The operator installs it to offer us its Internet services and we leave it picking up dust in a corner of the room without paying much attention, although later we complain that we suffer cuts in the WiFi and that we can not take advantage of all the contracted megas.
Is it time to change the model and complement or replace the one that our ISP has given us? It depends. It depends on the quantity and quality of users that we are at home. That is, how many of us will be browsing and accessing Internet or local services at the same time and what these services will be. Next we will review the needs of three large groups of users based on the use of the Internet and the local home network and recommend some interesting router models for each group. Households with sporadic or little intensive use The group with the least problems when it comes to choosing a router is that of households that use the Network sporadically or with reduced bandwidth needs. They access the Internet occasionally to browse for a while, use email, chat, instant messaging and the most complex thing they do is watch some videos on YouTube.
In addition, there will be no more than one or two users accessing the local network or the Internet at the same time, either from mobile terminals or from computers, with which the bandwidth and process power requirements to manage it are very reduced. In general, these are homes in which there are ADSL connections with speeds of 10 or less Mbps., Although with the current trend of operators installing fiber even at low speeds it may also be the case that they have any of these links of 30 or more Mbps.
Anyway, these bandwidth to the Internet are usually more than enough to meet the needs of the home and the routers loaned by the operator on duty perfectly fulfill their role, because although they only have WiFi G or N and Ethernet ports of 10 / 100 Mbps, the local network will more than cover the basic needs. Therefore, in general, this type of users with little intensive use will not need to acquire a new router. Enterprise router is a basic product for any business/enterprise. Perhaps there are two cases in which within this first group we can consider buying a better equipment: when the coverage of the wireless network is very poor (although we also have other options such as buying a repeater or a PLC) and when the stability of our router is very bad (that is, when the connection is hung or cut every few minutes).
In these cases, if we can, it is best to opt for a model that is compatible, if possible, with the type of connection we have (ADSL, VDSL, etc.), to completely replace our operator’s equipment, although we can find some problems of incompatibilities or complications in the configuration and if we only want to improve WiFi coverage will increase the price and the headaches. Any interesting model? Well, for example, we have Fritz! Box 4020, a relatively cheap device (about 60 euros), with WiFi N of up to 450 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, 4 100 Mbps Ethernet wired connections and another 100 Mbps WAN to connect the modem’s output the operator.
Households with intermediate use
Wireless Routers Room Home 750x400portada2 Copy Going a little further up the ladder of the use of the Network we have a large mass of households that need better Internet access speeds and local networks with greater bandwidth to support several services simultaneously. We are talking about homes where there will be between 2 and 4 users accessing the different networks concurrently through multiple devices and in which video / music services are also being used online and on demand in a habitual but not intensive way. Different connected household equipment, such as smartTV, media players, AV receivers, etc.
In these cases we need more powerful routers with wireless and wired interfaces that can support several information flows of high bandwidth at the same time. We no longer use the most basic WiFi G or N, nor in general the models of a single frequency band.
We must look for a dual band device that works in 2.4 and 5 GHz, with several high-gain antennas if possible, to better direct the power of the signal. It is also convenient that they have some Gigabit Ethernet port for the most demanding applications, although in general with 100 Mbps ports it could be enough to support video streaming at 720p and 1080p.