When my most recent blog post hit facebook, one of my dear friends asked me this in response: “Tell me what diff it makes to consumer….whether he buys a Belkin or Linksys or Motorola router…..as long as his internet provider st[r]eams a good bandwidth”

Now, price is certainly not a concern for him (he works in Wall Street) 🙂 So what makes consumers like him wonder if their Router brand is relevant or not? Simple: many of us don’t know that irrespective of the internet speed (bandwidth) delivered to our homes by our Service Provider, the throttling factor for performance in the home is the Wireless Router.

Let’s say you have a 20Mbps broadband subscription at home (in Singapore you can get 1Gbps fiber broadband for $39/month). Basic applications such as emails, web browsing, listening to online music etc. can be all done pretty well with 1-2Mbps bandwidth. The most bandwidth intensive application in a typical home is video streaming. Even for that, a 720p HD video needs only about 3-4Mbps. If you want to go extreme and stream a Blu-ray quality 3D video that would consume ~10Mbps. Agree, the cloud (server) from where you are downloading a file or streaming a video will also have a bearing on the transfer speed… but all those factors being the same, you should still have sufficient bandwidth left in your internet pipe for your other devices, isn’t it? But then why is it that your YouTube is still buffering? Why are the kids complaining that as soon as the Smart TV in the living room is turned on, the internet access slows down on their study PC, or their facetime chats stutter?

Only one reason: your Wireless Router sucks big time!

If you are using an old technology (Wireless-G, Wireless-N) Router it is highly likely that there is interference with other radio signals in the same 2.4GHz frequency spectrum. No-name cheap Routers use poor quality antennas and electronics which dramatically degrade the performance. Many of these Routers may be using a single antenna configuration (seen in their data sheets as “1×1”) which means, one antenna to transmit and one to receive. This would also mean poor signal strength when multiple Wi-Fi devices are turned on. As many of these off-the-shelf products come from OEM manufacturers they won’t bother to build in any types of QoS (Quality of Service) capabilities into their software. Picture this:  you install the best water supply system and plumbing system in your home, with a large pipe that brings lots of water into the home uninterrupted 24/7. And then you mount a tiny, old, heavily-clogged shower head in your bathroom. Good luck with your shower, isn’t it? 🙂

Industry-leading brands like Linksys and Belkin deliver high performance Routers that use latest Wi-Fi technologies such as Wireless-AC or Dual Band Wireless N. The antennas and electronics used are best-in-class, and there are even multiple antenna configurations such as 3×3 or 2×2 for better transmission and reception of signals. The software inside these Routers are custom-built with QoS enabled. Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers even allow you to choose which device or application in your home should get the bandwidth priority. That’s what will ensure lag-free gaming, jitter-free Netflix movies, buffer-free YouTube, crystal clear Skype/facetime conversations, all at the same time.

There’s one other point worth mentioning here as well. Most of us believe that the home network performance is directly related to internet speed from the Provider. With so many connected devices and multimedia content in our homes these days, what we often forget is that we are not always streaming and consuming content directly off the internet. You might have a desktop PC or hard disc (NAS) at home where you store all your ripped/downloaded movies, TV series episodes, music and other stuff. What if you want to stream them to your Smart TV? Yet another reason why you need a robust and high performance Wi-Fi Router such as a Linksys or Belkin Router at home.

Bottomline:

It doesn’t matter how much you spend every month for your blazing fast internet connection… if you are using a lousy Wi-Fi Router, your home network will suffer. Switch to a Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router today and experience the difference.