Choosing the best wireless router

 If your family is very similar these days, a typical night at home might look like this: it ends with the latest Netflix series designed in the living room, one of your kids is playing upstairs, and your spouse is uploading photos. the office.

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

And while wired Ethernet connections are generally faster and more secure, it's best to use a managed wireless router connection if you want to roam around the house, using laptops and other mobile devices. Wireless technology also eliminates most cables.

If your ISP is your cable company, your router will connect to a cable modem, which provides your connection to the Internet. For other services, such as Verizon FiOS, the router can be combined with a single-box broadband modem 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 do not want to buy or rent a router from your service provider.

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

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

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

Features to consider

LAN ports

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 function. If more LAN ports are required than the router, you can increase the number available 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 a built-in print server.

Quality of service (QoS)

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

Application based management

By supporting almost all new routers, the applications are designed to simplify the configuration and regulation of the WiFi network. The applications facilitate the monitoring of devices connected to the network and the configuration of priority devices. These applications can also notify you when an update is available for your router.