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What you need to know about Wi-Fi Router before you buy

Every broadband router destined for the home market has Wi-Fi capability, how to choose the right one, well, don’t go by the marker advertised speeds, which seldom have much to do with reality, some vendors go as far as using the 300 Mbps speed in the names of routers that can’t achieve anywhere near that throughput in the real world, you best bet is to avoid any pitch that tells you about the speed of the router, instead you might need and that might be buried deep down in the feature chart, fortunately, the market is flooded with Wi-Fi routers, so finding a good one is simpler that you might think, if you know what you’re looking for.

The 802.11g Wi-Fi router, which use a technology that has been around for seven years, still popular, especially in the corporate world, small businesses buy G routers because they are cheaper and perform adequately, some router 802.11g routers include specialized functions that are essential in business, such as powerful policy based firewall and threat management features, but in the home, speed is far more important, and there the 802.11n Wi-Fi router is king, N routers often deliver as much as five times as much throughput as G router in real testing.

N routers come in two flavors single band and dual band, single band routers use the 2.4 GHz band, the same frequency used by G routers, dual band N routers support 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, event at 2.4 GHz, N routers are faster than G routers because they make better use of the frequency range in the band, and they’re better at bouncing signal off surrounding surface such as furniture and walls, switching a dual band N router from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz, some routers can achieve as much as 100 Mbps more by switching up, dual band routers though generally more expensive, outperform single band 2.4 GHz routers.

Simultaneous dual band N transmission is recent development used by some manufactures to simplify switching between bands, routers with this features such as the D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme X dual band Gigabit router and the Apple airport extreme base station 802.11n, transmit the N signal simultaneously in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, by using both frequencies, the routers achieve longer range and better signal strength and as you might expect, they don’t manual switching between bands, simultaneous dual band routers are also more efficient in their throughput, some such as the D-Link DIR-825, can even manage the band without any input from users, simultaneous dual band can help stabilized the overall throughput on your network, these routers are generally more expensive, but worth the extra money if you have it to spend.

Because the speed in N routers depends heavily on the signal bouncing and multiple transmitters and receiver antennas, the ideal antenna configuration is 4 by 4, this means the routers has four antennas, each of which has a transmitter and an antenna, generally, however, most high-and N routers come with a 3 by 2 or 3 by 3 antenna configuration, while antennas come in all shapes and sizes, most are visible, tubular antennas, vendor apple, Netgear and Linksys by Cisco have redesigned some antennas so they are hidden from view.

Guest access is one of the most useful and most underrate features of a wireless routers, routers with guest access, such as Belkin N+ wireless router can separate Wi-Fi network into two, this capability allows friends to use your broadband access without knowing the password for your network, you can achieve a similar configuration with routers that support virtual LAN (VLAN), but steps in setting-up multiple VLAN are more difficult.

Wi-Fi Protected setup (WPS)
Wi-Fi protected setup is a standard for securing your laptop with a Wi-Fi router, the technology simplifies the encryption process that users otherwise have to go through to secure a Wi-Fi network, is the technology simpler to use then the schemes that preceded it, that depends on the laptop and operating system you use, vista’s windows connect now (WCN), for instance, is compliant with WPS, when WPS does work, it’s simple process, getting the configuration to work on laptops that don’t support it (in both software and hardware), however is quite and ordeal, should you then look for this feature in a router, WPS isn’t essential and all too often, some part of your setup won’t be compatible, still, many N routers offer it, when it works, it’s worthwhile.

How many wire port
The more the merrier, while most Wi-Fi N routers come with a standard five port block, you’ll be surprised by how many don’t the Apple airport Xtreme and Apple time capsule, for example, have only four port apiece, adding a NAS device an Xbox 360, a VoIP phone and a PC will max out a five port router, the last port connect to your DSL or WAN cable.

Strong Firewall
Fortunately, most routers include a firewall and many use the SPI (stateful packet inspection, firewall which is considered to be better than the older NAT firewall, a few routers, such as the SMC barricade N wireless broadband routers, provide a range of manual setting on firewall. Manual firewall settings are designed for specific usage needs and not for enhancing the overall capability of a firewall, as long as a Wi-Fi router has an SPI firewall, that’s enough for most of us.

Sometimes businesses need extra security or technologies that are not available in some routers. A few home routers, such as the SMC barricade N wireless routers and Asus RT-N11 EZ wireless N routers have advanced features, such as 802.1X authentication, routing and VLANs that make them particularly attractive to small businesses.

Routers like the Netgear WNR3500 support dynamic DNS as in the Dyndns.org or TZP.com services ad are the best to buy if you want to access your network remotely, with dynamic DNS, you can gain access by using domain like myhomenetwork.net instead of using the IP address provide to you by your ISP, since ISP rotate IP address, the easiest way to find your network on the web is by activating a dynamic DNS account in your router.

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