How to choose the right Wi-Fi router - the number of connections, speed and other points

Hello.

Having touched on the topic that not all Wi-Fi routers work the same way, I received a lot of questions and

examples of how people get out of the situation.Unfortunately, most guides on how to choose the right Wi-Fi router for your home are replete with graphs, technical specifications and do not answer the main question - how can an ordinary person choose the one that suits him from the whole variety of devices. It is possible that the router provided by the operator will be just right, but what if it is not enough? How to determine the capabilities of the model by eye and what is worth knowing about it? In the first material of the cycle, we discussed the occurrence of Wi-Fi interference, how to install a router in an apartment, but almost did not touch on the issue of choosing a model.

I want to make a reservation right away that I willtalk about the algorithm and what exactly you need to check, watch. If any specific manufacturers are mentioned, then only based on my experience of communicating with them, you can safely not think about them, concentrate on the selection algorithm. To complete the picture, it is worth reading the previous text.

Wi-Fi Interference - Why Wi-Fi is Slow at Home or Office

Mistakes in installing routers at home, how Wi-Fi interference occurs and how to deal with them - we talk about what can be done for good Wi-Fi at home.

We calculate the load of the router - the number of connected devices
Wired connection - why you need it
Repeater or MESH system - you need to think
Additional software - application or cloud
Tell me the specific model of the router!

We calculate the load of the router - the number of connected devices

I briefly touched on this topic in the previous text, buta certain understatement is felt, many demanded a specific answer - how many devices can be connected to the router, tell me the exact number. It is difficult to do this in most cases, since there are theoretical values and what we get in practice.

In theory, the DHCP server on the router can issueseveral hundred addresses, in practice this is never an achievable value. For example, in TP-Link they limit their routers to almost a hundred devices (more precisely, 99 addresses). Other manufacturers are guided by existing standards, without encryption up to 127 devices are available, with WEP encryption - exactly the same number, with the WPA algorithm (it is outdated) - up to 57 clients, with WPA2 / 3 - up to 122 clients. This is the number of devices that can be connected to the router but are not transmitting data!

Disabling encryption allows you to achievethe maximum number of connections in practice, but the idea is very bad, anyone in theory will be able to see everything you do on the network. The better the encryption, the better protected you are, and you definitely shouldn't give up protection.

Miscellaneous

Affiliate material

Reality and prospects of the IT professions market

What professions are the most popular and highly paid?

Saturday coffee #204

Pour a cup of fragrant Saturday coffee andcheck out the news of the week. Yandex blurs the boundaries on maps, Apple introduced the new MacBook Air, Haval Dargo came out in Russia, and I tested SberBox…

Mercedes-Benz E-class W213 test. The best premium sedan?

The Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan is consistently among the top most popular premium cars on our market, and this applies not only to new cars, but also to used cars, where it is also in demand.

Realme 8 Pro Review (RMX3081)

Updating the flagship of the middle segment: upgraded the camera, refreshed the interface and appearance, but retained many already familiar characteristics. Can the smartphone become the new hit?

Now let's watch what's going onpractice. The most expensive home routers pull about twenty simultaneous connections, inexpensive models can work with 6-8 connections at most. But the number of connections tells us nothing about the quality of the router and the speed that it can give to a particular device. Usually people evaluate the quality of the Internet at home by the speed that their smartphone or computer gives out, and the speed test takes place under ideal conditions - you test the speed on one device.

Let's look at a typical router provided by a home operator, 100 Mbps. Here's what speed it gives out when tested on one smartphone.

Let's add a second smartphone and try to check the speed on two devices at the same time, it drops.

Our Internet channel is divided between twosimultaneously operating devices, depending on the priority of each device, the signal level (read - the quality of the antennas of the device, the distance from the router), the speed also depends. By increasing the number of devices transmitting data, we will ensure that the router will lose speed and performance. And here you need to think about how many devices you use at home, and most importantly, how you use them.

Let's look at different scenarios to make it easier to understand which router you might need.

Tenement building, one house

You live alone, occasionally guests come to you,which most likely do not claim your internet. We count the number of devices that you can have: a smartphone (even let it be two!), a computer, a game console and a smart TV, add some household appliances here - a vacuum cleaner, a security system, a smart home. Even if you constantly use all the equipment, you will have 2-4 devices working at the same time. For example, you watch TV (streaming), at the same time flip through mail, web pages on your computer or smartphone, you have a vacuum cleaner working (when it is not working, there is no data transfer). You simply cannot create any tangible load, it is invisible in most cases, and any router, including the one offered by the broadband operator, will suit you.

But if you know the sin of loadinglarge files of tens of GB, it may be worth considering something else and at the same time increase the speed of the provider to the maximum. The reason is that on a slow channel, the router can choke, and if there is no resume of files, you will have to start all over again.

A budget option in which the savings are maximum and you will be satisfied with any router that is.

Tenement building, family of two or three

There is a temptation to take the previous calculation and justmultiply all devices by two, but this will not work, here the coefficient is rather 1.5 for two people and 2 for three, and then with the proviso that the third is not a child of preschool age. The number of TVs may vary, but you are unlikely to watch different movies in different rooms at the same time. The load is higher, but it does not differ fundamentally. In theory, any router is also enough, but its resource will be selected much more, local problems are possible.

If you have a two-room apartment, then it is worththink about something more interesting than a budget router, with a larger area it’s definitely worth thinking about, the signal quality will be better in any corner, plus there will be a margin of safety, the router will withstand any load. On average, the number of simultaneous connections in a family of three, when everyone is at home, is about five devices. And an ordinary router pulls such an amount, although at the limit of its capabilities.

Tenement building, family of four or five

Probably, in such a family there are three rooms and more, thenwe are limited by the need to cover a larger area, plus another number of devices can work simultaneously, on average, as experience shows, these are ten devices connected and transmitting data. For example, there may be a couple of TVs, a smart home, up to five smartphones and a computer, plus someone will listen to music on a smart speaker. A very real scenario that requires a good connection (starting from 100 Mbps and above, and 100 Mbps no longer have a safety margin for such consumption). Someone will start downloading a large file near the router, and other users will feel that they cannot quickly open pages on the network, the Internet starts to slow down.

Not only a good router is important here, but also the presencerepeaters (optionally Mesh systems) plus enough bandwidth that users can share. You can focus on systems of medium and high price levels.

Country house, two floors - 200-300 square meters

Regardless of the number of people living, you will needprovide communication on different floors, so you need to either choose an expensive router with good coverage, or expand the network with repeaters. It’s definitely not worth focusing on budget decisions here, proper planning is important.

Each story is unique, each person (family)different from the other. I'm sure you already have a Wi-Fi router, so the easiest thing you can do is to see how much data you use monthly, which devices consume the most data (most likely it will be a game console or smart TV, Where do you watch movies?

Here we go from the opposite, we consider yourconsumption by the fact, not by the number of people and devices. And by understanding the volume of traffic, you can decide which channel you need and choose the right price range router.

Gadgets

As an advertisement

Acer ES series 1 electric scooter review (AES001)

Acer has made its debut on the Russian market of electric scooters, and we are in a hurry to share our impressions of riding on the base model. Can the simplest solution be the best choice?

Acer

Overview of the flagship Samsung Galaxy S22 (SM S901B/DS)

Compact smartphone for calls, instant messengers. Excellent assembly and at the same time similar to the iPhone 13 Pro in appearance, but completely different stuffing and character. The base model of the new line.

5 best smartphones after another devaluation of the ruble

We are looking for profitable offers in the market.

HONOR CHOICE Robot Cleaner R1 Review

Classic robot vacuum cleaner with long battery life and wet cleaning capability…

Wired connection - why you need it

We are used to the fact that the world has become wireless, andit seems to us that this is good even within the framework of our apartments. Not always and not in everything. Look at the Keenetic Giga router, on the back panel you can see LAN connectors to which you can connect other devices with a wire.

Outdated connection type? No matter how!For example, I have my local cloud connected to my Wi-Fi router in this way, where home computers upload intermediate archives daily. A direct connection to a Wi-Fi router is good because it reduces the load on your home Wi-Fi network. There are dozens of solutions that you can use for such a task, for every taste and color.

Another point is the quality of games in the cloud, wherethe minimum delay is important. A wireless connection degrades the signal quality in any case, so having a wired computer connection for a player is simply a must. And it is desirable to lay wires in all rooms where it is planned to play. Although it all depends on the games and their complexity, this item is more likely to be appreciated by teenagers who are cut online with their comrades.

In addition, you can connect cameras and other devices with a wire, but I won’t talk about all the possibilities, this is a separate issue.

Repeater or MESH system - you need to think

Until recently, you had no choiceTo cover large spaces with a Wi-Fi network, it was necessary to install repeaters, they picked up the signal of the main router and transmitted it to other devices. The downside here is that when working with repeaters, as a rule, all network access control settings, restrictions on work time, for example, for a child, do not work as intended. Of course, this depends on the manufacturer and the specific system, but in most cases this is the case. Moreover, when using a repeater, you switch between points, while the MESH system maintains a single network throughout the entire coverage area. This is clearly shown in the animation.

In my opinion, today it is worth choosing a router with MESH technology support, even if you do not plan to expand its capabilities at the moment, let it be for growth.

Additional software - application or cloud

When using one router, you cancustomize it as you like, but if this is a budget model, then the number of settings is quite limited. It is important here not only what exactly you can change, in the end, most will not get into fine settings, but how you will do it.

For me, it is important to haveapplications for Android (perhaps you have an iPhone and the application is important to you too), as well as a cloud account that allows you to “watch” your system remotely (I love my Keenetic for this opportunity).

When choosing a router, they often look at technicalcharacteristics, they almost do not think about software and applications for the router. But this is also important, and here it is worth paying attention to what these applications are, what they can do. Often, the web interface is much better than the application, and richer in settings, but the application itself provides additional options for managing the system, especially from afar.

Tell me the specific model of the router!

In the end, all explanations fall intothe fact that people nod, look understandingly into the eyes and, without telling anything about themselves, ask for advice on a specific model of the router. In isolation from their use cases, tasks, and the interlocutor’s understanding of what exactly they will need to do. Such advice can be called unequivocally harmful, a rational buyer must independently think about what exactly he needs.

Calculate the load on the router, estimate the dimensionsyour home, try on what you will have in the future, perhaps there will be more devices and an increase in the volume of transmitted data (it grows by an average of 20-30% per year). You can look for reviews of specific routers on our website or in other sources, pay attention not to paper characteristics, but to a set of features, and, most importantly, try them on yourself. And then the probability of missing will be minimal. Good luck choosing!

Wi-Fi Interference - Why Wi-Fi is Slow at Home or Office

Mistakes in installing routers at home, how Wi-Fi interference occurs and how to deal with them - we talk about what can be done for good Wi-Fi at home.