Choose router wifi

What Carriers Use Sprint's Network? Home » Internet Service. How to Choose a Router. By Catherine McNally.

Published on March 18, Share Article. Consider how much you want to spend on a router. Check to see if your new router is compatible with your ISP. Make sure your router supports the internet speed you pay for. Look for a newer wireless protocol.

So you may not need to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 just yet. Use mesh Wi-Fi or extenders to spread Wi-Fi through your house. Quality of Service QoS. Now that you know how to choose a router, check these out next. Find speedy and cheap internet plans in your area.

Have Comcast Xfinity internet? See Our Recommended Xfinity Routers. How long will a router last? Which brand router is best? Written by. She believes the internet is a necessity, not a luxury, and writes reviews and guides to help everyone stay connected. Read More. Related Articles. Suddenlink offers high-speed internet service in rural areas, but is it worth the price? Optimum isn't available everywhere, but if you can get it, we recommend it. Read our We sampled thousands of people and performed speed tests to see which wireless carrier offers Feature Comparisons.

They each have their own technical challenges and potential issues. You can use Wi-Fi repeaters to spread the Wi-Fi from a single router a bit further and potentially boost the signal in a dead spot. These devices are a good solution for some people, but they can be inefficient, prone to interference, and often create a secondary network with a different name from your regular Wi-Fi. Sold in pairs, power line adapters pass an internet signal through your electrical wiring.

You plug one into a power outlet near your router and connect it with an Ethernet cable, while the other power line adapter plugs into a power outlet in the room where you want faster internet. They can be a good solution if you have a console or smart TV in your living room at the back of the house, but your router is in the front hall, for example. Unfortunately, effectiveness depends heavily on your electrical wiring. The maximum speed of your internet is determined by your ISP.

Internet speeds are stated in Mbps megabits per second. Most ISPs will state up to a certain speed or give you a range—like Mbps download and 30 Mbps upload—but what you actually get is often lower than the maximum especially upload speeds , and it must be shared between all of your connected devices. You can check what download and upload speed you are getting by running a speed test in your browser.

Generally speaking, if there are multiple people in the household streaming 4K video with several gadgets connected, you'll want at least Mbps, if not more. If you only have a few devices connected and are mostly just surfing the web, with some videos here and there, you'll be fine with 50 or Mbps.

If your internet connection maxes out at Mbps, then any device in your home connecting to the internet will be capped at that speed, even if the router supports much higher speeds. The stated speed is the combined maximum, rather than the speed you can expect to reach with a single connected device. You will always get a lower speed in real-life conditions. They always begin IEEE The bit to pay attention to is the letters at the end.

Wi-Fi 6 and 6E aren't just about faster speeds; they also offer increased capacity, efficiency, performance, and security. You should know that if you get a Wi-Fi 6 or 6E router, your other hardware, like your laptop and smartphone, needs to support Wi-Fi 6 to truly reap the benefits of the latest standard.

Different Wi-Fi protocols support different frequencies or bands. You'll mostly see routers that support 2. When a router or device is dual-band, that means it supports both. Tri-band routers broadcast three signals, which currently means two on the 5-GHz band and one on 2.

Each of these bands is essentially a chunk of frequency. The 2. The 5-GHz band has 45 channels, but they aren't limited to 20 MHz; they can also be bonded together to create MHz or MHz channels, which allows them to transmit more data.

The 6-GHz band supports 60 channels and they can be as wide as MHz. The main difference is that 2. It's like jumping from a single-track road 2. Each of the protocols is backward compatible. Any router you choose nowadays is likely to be at least dual-band, but you may want to check how the bands are handled. It was common to have the bands appear separately, so when searching for Wi-Fi on your device you might see two options like Wi-Fi 2.

Modern routers such as Google's Nest Wifi engage in band steering, where they automatically pick the band, and you only see a single Wi-Fi network. This is simpler and will work well for most people, but it can cause issues when setting up smart home devices that can only connect to one band, as they often also require the device setting up usually your smartphone to be on the same band.

Some devices require a wired connection to your router. Even when it's not needed, an Ethernet cable is always going to offer more stable connections that are much faster than Wi-Fi. If you can, you should try to use a wired connection for devices like PCs, TVs, and consoles so you can leverage the fastest speeds out of your router. Either way, you'll need a free Ethernet port, so make sure you check that your router or mesh system has enough of them. Several high-end mesh systems, such as Nest Wifi or Eero, only have a single Ethernet port on the main router and none on the nodes.

Most of smartphones, tablets, or computers of today support Modern The Wi-Fi standard is called The versions are all forward and backward-compatible.

All wireless communication occurs on specific frequency bands. All wireless devices operate at 2. Some devices are single-band and can only use the 2. The 2. This way the devices that support Dual-band devices are divided into selectable dual-band devices and simultaneous ones. The selectable dual-band routers will let you switch between the 2. This comes in handy for such devices like NAS, media streaming server, gaming laptop, etc.

Thanks to the wider band these devices can work on a higher speed with the least lag. Almost all wifi routers offer the possibility to switch among different channels in their interface. But it is good to keep in mind that there are different WiFi networks operating on each channel, so switching from channel to channel may not improve the connection, in fact it can slow it down.

However it can be worth trying as the majority of network operate on the default channel and that is often the same one. There are more non-overlapping channels on 5 GHz band, providing more options without interference and greater speed. The available non-overlapping channels on this band include 36, 40, 44, 48, , , , and , and the majority of AC and high-end N routers support them well. There are special solutions that help you check the channel interference and swap the channels to the more appropriate ones for every connection.

We highly recommend you to download NetSpot that will provide you with the chart of channels and can switch your network to the recommended one. This will help improve network speed when interference is the issue. Different versions of the protocols are not hard to differentiate from each other, however classes can be tricky. A class Wi-Fi These numbers are important as they are based on the maximum link speed supported by this router. Most of the time, the higher this number, the faster the router is.

The chart below displays the maximum link speeds of modern simultaneous dual-band router classes on each band. Remember that these speeds are the theoretical maximum at which your devices could connect to the router given the ideal conditions. As it is meant to be, every new update in technology suggests improvements, which is exactly true for the range of WiFi routers from However the switch to 5 GHz from N onward will in reality reduce the range due to the higher frequency limitations for obstacles.

It matters how hardware is built, the way the WiFi router antenna is connected, the quality of the antenna, etc. Most high quality routers in N mode should cover feet indoors and feet outdoors, with range in AC mode, it is the less connected devices, the higher the range.

Before obtaining a WiFi router, get an idea about its range, either by testing it out yourself if you have the possibility or by reading the reviews for it. There is a possibility to increase the WiFi router range that you already have at home by replacing its antenna s with higher-range one s.