Understanding Router Specs: What Matters Most for PC Users

Routers Specs – What You Should Know

In today’s world, advertisements are more important than actual facts. More often than not, shoppers tend to purchase relying on their emotions rather than what they actually might need. The color, shape, or even slogan might sway buyers, instead of facts.

Specifications are often difficult to access because the product page is a flurry of images and big words which are more often than not, misleading.

What you as a buyer can do is understand what you require from a product to do for you. In the case of routers, the following things are what you should pay attention to:

Router Wi-Fi Generation Support

Routers tend to boast with magical speeds that exceed what you might need or even your current internet plan. These speeds can be misleading. Routers are advertised with a speed that is actually two combined speeds if they are dual-band routers, adding the speeds of the faster and slower bandwidth.

But, if you know the Wi-Fi generation of the router, such as Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6, 6E, you can estimate which speeds you can expect on which frequency. The 5GHz frequency can support a transfer rate of up to 1300 Mbps. Compared to 5GHz, the 2.4GHz frequency can support up to 450 Mbps, or more, in special cases.

Check the specifications to see what the theoretical maximum of your router might be, so that you don’t exceed its limitations. That same diligence should be applied for ethernet speeds because most PCs are connected using ethernet.

Security – WPA2 Is a Minimum

Routers are typically protected by some security standard. The most frequent ones are WEP, WPA, and WPA2. WPA2 is the most common one today. If the router supports it, it has one thing that you can tick off the list.

WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access and is a security certification program developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi-certified products have to be capable of WPA2, or more recently WPA3, which was released in 2018.

Check which generation of WPA is supported and go for the router which has WPA2 as a minimum and preferably WPA3, for the best available protection.

MU-MIMO

Released alongside Wi-Fi 4 in 2009, MIMO, or Multiple Input Multiple Output, revolutionized how traffic was handled. That was okay for a couple of years, but smartphones became more demanding and a horde of devices hungry for a Wi-Fi connection stepped up. Wi-Fi 4 and MIMO couldn’t handle it.

When Wi-Fi 5 was released, MU-MIMO (MU standing for Multiple User) once more changed how traffic was handled. This was important in an ever-growing sea of devices that competed for bandwidth. MU-MIMO enables the router to handle incoming and outgoing traffic without congestion.

Dynamic QoS

Dynamic QoS could be helpful if you have a relatively slow internet connection. It stands for Dynamic Quality of Service and it allows the router to handle outgoing data in a way that will most benefit each application competing for the bandwidth.

However, this will not do much if you have a decent internet speed, above the 250 Mbps limit. Anything above that should be able to handle most common use cases such as streaming and watching videos at the same time. You might do better by limiting the applications that suck a lot of bandwidth with a software solution, rather than a hardware one.

Another thing to note is that a better router will not magically increase your bandwidth, because the limitations might stem from a slow internet plan.

Antennae – They are Sometimes Helpful

The best thing you can do to increase your Wi-Fi range is purchase a Mesh Wi-Fi solution, though that might not be available to everyone, given the price. You have most likely noticed that most expensive routers have multiple antennae and that they protrude in a rather eye-catching way.

The antennae can be helpful, but that might not be the case all the time. For example, the author updated from a no antennae router to one with four of them and there was no range increase for the 2.4 GHz frequency. The 5GHz frequency was unable to reach rooms where the other one had a much better signal, though that is to be expected. The point is that the antennae might not make a difference.

Gaming routers especially, are known to have many antennas, sometimes even eight of them. Do multiple searches and find range comparisons that actually list how many meters/feet a router is capable of reaching. Note that the range also depends on the other devices connecting to the router.

A flagship smartphone will fare better than an affordable smartwatch, not to mention that the type and thickness of walls will also affect the range.

Conclusion – Specifications Might and Might not Matter

The first thing to note when looking at routers specs is to eliminate all the advertising lingo and look for facts. Check against third-party reviews, especially ones dedicated to testing networking equipment.

The specifications you should pay attention to are Wi-Fi generations, actual transfer rate per band if it is a dual or tri-band router, security features, and range. The range will matter on outside factors and a monstrosity with arachnid numbers of antennas or more might not perform better than a simple router would.

Networking is a combination of multiple things such as your internet plan, the router, but also the end devices, which must support the same technologies as the router, in order to make use of them.

In the end, make sure to purchase the router that fits your needs the most, and not the most advertised and “universally” declared best products.