Get yourself a great Wi-Fi router – It is worth it
Fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-business are growing rapidly in South Africa, offering connection speeds of up to 1Gbps.
The high speed and low latency which a fibre connection offers make using the Internet a pleasure.
However, unless you have a high-end Wi-Fi router as part of your set-up, you can lose speed from unnecessary bottlenecks.
The not-so-astonishing realisation that a high-quality Wi-Fi router is a great investment hit home after I bought an Asus RT-AC5300 router on special recently.
You know the router – the one that looks like it is the product of a spider mating with R2-D2.
I bought the router partly because it looks sweet, but I soon realised that its performance matches its looks.
The speed which I received in rooms in my house doubled, and the performance was more consistent compared to my old router.
My Asus RT-N12 is a “300Mbps Wireless N Router”, which sounds good, but it is simply not in the same league as the Asus RT-AC5300.
The best way to describe the difference between the two routers, and why you should spend more for a high-end device, is shown in the speed tests below.
I have no idea whether the new router’s Tri-Band Smart Connect or its 4×4 antenna design with AiRadar universal beamforming is to thank for the higher speeds, but the results were clear.
The results of two sets of tests I conducted are detailed below.
100Mbps fibre, using the Asus RT-N12
Speed with line-of-sight, a few metres away from the router
Speed in a nearby room, with one wall in-between, around 15 metres away from the router
Speed in another room, with four walls in-between, around 30 metres away from the router
100Mbps fibre, using an Asus RT-AC5300
Speed with line-of-sight, a few metres away from the router
Speed in a nearby room, with one wall in-between, around 15 metres away from the router
Speed in another room, with four walls in-between, around 30 metres away from the router
Now read: Asus RT-AC5300 alien spider router review
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