Wireless12.06.2017

Get yourself a great Wi-Fi router – It is worth it

Asus Wi-Fi Router

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

Router

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

Asus-Old-1wall

Speed in another room, with four walls in-between, around 30 metres away from the router

Asus-Old-4wall


100Mbps fibre, using an Asus RT-AC5300

Asus-RT-AC5300

Speed with line-of-sight, a few metres away from the router

Asus New Close

Speed in a nearby room, with one wall in-between, around 15 metres away from the router

Asus New 1Wall

Speed in another room, with four walls in-between, around 30 metres away from the router

Asus New 4Wall


Now read: Asus RT-AC5300 alien spider router review

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