A lot of home users are going to be buying a router that has a wireless access point built into it. A lot of businesses buy a router and then buy separate access points. For the sake of this article, we are going to assume that you are a home user and will be buying a router with a wireless access point built in.
Some main things to think about when buying a new router:
How many people are using it, how many devices are going to be on the network?
You should have a stronger router and look for a feature called MIMO (Multiple input multiple output) when you have 10+ devices that are trying to connect with your router at any given moment. The majority of home users will have less than 10 devices, so a standard router will do just fine.
How large of a house do you have?
The size of your house and what it is constructed of can cause interference with the signal. It’s possible to see what interferences you may have and buy a router based off of that, but the general rule of thumb is ‘the bigger the better’. Especially because you never know how your environment may change over time.
Where is your router going to be located?
Where your router is located is very dependent on the size of your house. You wouldn’t want your router in the basement or in the far corner of your house when the devices that you use the most are on the top floor or in the opposite part of the house. This will lead to weak signal strengths, slower speeds and overall communication issues between your device and the router.
Routers project their signal in a sphere, so if you can have your router in the central area of your house, you will have better connection for all devices throughout your house.
If your router cannot be centralized, then having a stronger router will be important.
Patching:
To patch your router means to update your router. Once you buy a router, get it off the shelf and set it up, it will be running on default settings. Keeping your router on default can actually leave a lot of ports open which scammers and hackers can use to their advantage to get your data. This puts you in a vulnerable position. So once you do decide on a router to buy, make sure you update it and change the defaults.
If you’re not sure how to update your router or login to your router, come to PC Touchup and we will help you with that.
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