If you plan to
buy a wireless router, check out these 4 tips on how to choose a suitable one.
It's not so easy to decide as there are many choices out there. Basically
wireless router is used to route the network traffic between your network and
Internet. Hopefully these tips would help you to make good decision.
Check What
Wireless Standard you Need
There are many
wireless routers supporting different wireless standard, such as 802.11a,
802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n (draft n), so which standard should you use?
The most popular
and mature standard is 802.11g but the latest is 802.11n (draft n), however I
would advise to choose the one with 802.11g standard if possible.
802.11g can
support bandwidth up to 55Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. It's compatible with 802.11b
products because they both use the same radio frequency. That means 802.11g
wireless router will be able to talk to 80.11b wireless adapter. The only
problem of 802.11b/g is its interference with other electronic devices that
utilize same 2.4GHz radio frequency and this will affect the wireless signal
strength.
Then how about
802.11b? Since 802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11g, so I don't
recommend you to use 802.11b product. 802.11a wireless router is not so popular
and normally used by business users, so you can forget about it.
As for the router
with 802.11n (draft n) standard, it's still new and the standard is yet to be
finalized by IEEE. The expected speed is 10 times faster than 802.11g and the
coverage is much wider. If you plan to buy it, be prepare to pay more as the
price is expensive.
Compatibility
with Other Wireless Devices
Think about the
compatibility with wireless adapter, access point or other wireless devices
when you choose the router. That's no point you bought an 802.11g wireless
router when other wireless devices are 802.11b aware only.
Always take into
accounts of how do you plan to deploy the wireless network, what wireless
devices you have and what others you plan to buy when choosing the wireless
router.
Wireless
Encryption Support
You must always
enable encryption on your wireless router, so choose the router with at least
WAP encryption. The best you can choose is the one with WPA2 encryption
support. Having encryption in your wireless network would allow authorized
users with correct encryption key to join the network. It would also avoid your
network bandwidth from stealing by neighbor or strangers.
Don't use WEP
encryption on your router if you have better choices, this type of encryption
is easily to be hacked by using hacking tool that freely available on Internet.
Other Security
Features on Best Wireless Router 2016
Look for the
router that provides firewall feature! This will add an additional layer of
protection to your network. If you manage to get the one with stateful
inspection support, that would be the best. Stateful inspection firewall will
inspect every state of the connections providing better capabilities to drop
the malicious traffic.
Check also about
the URL, IP and MAC address filtering features. These mentioned security
features should be common nowadays, but just check about it to make sure the
features are there.
That's all for
the tips, it's time to go to get your wireless router. Have fun! :o)
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