Choosing the Best Wireless Router

If your family is very similar these days, a typical evening at home might look like this: you find yourself with the latest Netflix series designed in the living room, one of your children are playing upstairs and your spouse is downloading Photos of the Facebook holidays in the office.

A router is a magic box that allows you to distribute your Internet connection to a variety of devices throughout the home, including desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and multimedia devices. Streaming, such as Apple TV, Google Chrome cast and Roku.

And although wired Ethernet connections are generally faster and more secure, it's best to use a Managed Wireless Router connection if you want to move around the house, using laptops and other mobile devices. Wireless also eliminates most of the cables.

If your ISP is your the cable company, your router will connect to a cable modem, which provides your Internet connection. For other services, such as Verizon FiOS, the router can be combined with a broadband modem in a single box provided by the provider at the time of registration.

In addition to the obvious reason, let's say your router is broken, you can also consider a new model because:

1. You don't want to buy or rent a router from your service provider.

2. You already have a broadband modem connected directly to a single computer but want to be able to connect to multiple devices.

3. The router only has wired connectivity, but you want to connect to wireless devices such as laptops and tablets.

4. Your existing router is too slow or its wireless range is too short to reach important places in your home.

Features to consider

LAN ports

The LAN ports are used to connect a computer to the router via an Ethernet cable. Many smart home devices connected to the Internet, such as Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings, require a hub connected to the LAN port to operate. If more LAN ports are needed than the router, you can increase the available number by adding an Ethernet switch.

USB ports

The router's USB ports are used to connect to a flash drive, external hard drive, or USB printer if the router has an integrated print server.

Quality of Service (QoS)

Also called media prioritization or traffic control. If you are the type of person who likes to play with your computer settings, you may appreciate the flexibility of this feature. You can optimize your router's performance based on what you are doing at a particular point in time. For example, you can change the settings to work best for streaming videos, making Skype calls, playing games, or playing music. This will give these applications more bandwidth. So, for example, your Netflix the movie doesn't stop and grow back because someone in the house is downloading a large file.

Application-based management

Supporting almost all new routers, the applications are designed to simplify the configuration and regulation of the WiFi network. Apps make it easy to monitor devices connected to the network and adjust priority devices. These applications can also notify you when an update is available for your router.