Wireless router is almost every household's essential, usually we may ignore its existence, but with the growing demand for home Internet access, the home old routers often need to be replaced as soon as possible.
Recently, many of my friends looking for me to recommend routers, nothing less than the basic needs of signal stability, strong ability to wear walls, but also the price is more appropriate, like thousands of routers are not considered the basic range, so how do we such a router Choose? Today we talk about wireless router purchase should pay attention to what!
1, learn to understand the basic parameters
Currently, more and more home routers are beginning to adopt 802.11ac wireless protocols, but some hundred hundred routers also have 802.11n products. Compared with the 802.11n standard, the 802.11ac standard mainly introduces 256-QAM Modulation mode, 80 / 160MHz bandwidth.
Therefore, the biggest advantage of 802.11ac wireless protocol is the transmission efficiency faster, in the case of home broadband escalating, apparently more able to meet the needs of home users.
In addition, some of the wireless routers adopting the 802.11ac wireless protocol also adopt the MU-MIMO (Multi-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) architecture. Unlike the MIMO in the legacy 802.11n era, MU-MIMO enables wireless routers to simultaneously and multiple Wireless terminal to communicate, thereby further enhancing the network capacity energy efficiency, to meet the needs of multiple devices at the same time access to the Internet.
The difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz
2.4GHz and 5GHz are actually the wireless signal frequency band, and 2.4GHz to occur earlier than 5GHz, so the versatility of 2.4GHz better than 5GHz, but it also caused the 2.4GHz band is too congested, while the 5GHz band is just Can solve this problem.
So the difference between the two can be summarized as two sentences, Speed: 5GHz WiFi is faster than 2.4GHz WiFi; Coverage: 2.4GHz WiFi is more than 5GHz WiFi coverage.
In addition, the coexistence of 2.4GHz and 5GHz (dual-frequency) has become a trend nowadays. The advantage of dual-band Wifi devices is that they have stronger anti-interference ability, more stable Wifi wireless signals, faster transmission speeds, So choose dual-band router is also a sure choice.
The better the number of antennas?
Whether the number of antennas is related to the capability of passing through a wall? Theoretically, if all routers are placed in the same standard, the more antennas are, the higher the representative power is, and the application of MIMO technology can also increase the transmission speed , Natural wall performance will be better.
But in fact by the product hardware design, including the impact of antenna materials, so the conclusion is not absolute, depending on the product, the built-in antenna is not necessarily worse than the external antenna to receive the reception, so the number of antennas Can only be said to be a reference pointer.
2, Gigabit, Fast one hundred how to choose?
When buying a router we need to know that wireless signal quality is not limited by the router, the most fundamental or mainly limited by the network bandwidth, such as your home broadband only 20M, so if you choose a Gigabit router, There will be some waste.
Because in the LAN environment, the M number of wireless routers, the wireless transmission speed (network speed) is certainly the better, while the Internet when the speed is determined by the size of the broadband.
That is, 50M broadband, whether it is with 300M router, or 1200M router, the maximum Internet speed when the Internet can only be 50M, so we have to take into account this point of purchase, of course, if it is for subsequent upgrades of broadband, So sure to suggest that you buy Gigabit dual-band router, eliminating the need to follow up the upgrade equipment.
In addition, the router's network port also need to pay attention, there are two main Gigabit Ethernet port and Fast Ethernet port.
Gigabit Ethernet card transfer rate is 1000Mbps (Gigabit), and Fast Ethernet card (ordinary card) transfer rate is 100Mbps (Fast), Gigabit Ethernet card and the biggest difference is that it is the network port transfer rate is 1000Mbps (Gigabit), it is ten times faster transfer rate of the card.
3, the relay is very useful
Home users will generally encounter the problem of wireless signal blind spots, so the router signal strength has been a home pain point, everyone hopes to buy a wireless router with excellent wall penetration capabilities.
However, according to the author's experience using a variety of routers, in fact, even the thousand-level router, the effect of the wall, in fact, not as good as another more practical solution, that is the wireless repeater / power cat, so Both can achieve the purpose of expanding wireless coverage, and the cost is relatively low price, more suitable for home users choose.
4, router + NAS useful?
In order to facilitate home users to store video, picture, audio and other resources, some high-end home router on the market will also be a combination of router + hard drive, and this is also in line with the definition of NAS.However, some routers are equipped with USB interface, Directly connected to the mobile hard disk, and some routers built-in SATA interface, insert the hard disk can be used.
So that we can store some files on the router side and access it as FTP, which is commonly known as "private cloud storage" function, but when choosing, we still have to choose rationally according to the actual needs. After all, NAS router is not cheap in price, if it is idle is a great waste of resources.
to sum up:
As an essential Internet access device for families, the choice of wireless router is actually the key. A practical router is obviously the common appeal of every consumer. Therefore, it is not necessary to pursue the configuration too much. Instead, it should select the appropriate Home router.
