The Long and Wireless Road to a Home Router
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Buying a home wireless router is about as chaotic and confusing a shopping experience as you will ever encounter.
Walk down the aisle where some distracted clerk points you and you'll see boxes marked cryptically as G, N and N+. And then another bunch of codes like 150, 300 and 600 as well as some marked dual-band. There are boxes next to them with things called "Powerline."
Try asking a clerk and you'll still be confused, except that maybe you'll be told that the most expensive one is the best.
You are going to need a little help.
Some retailers, like Best Buy, and manufacturers like Belkin and Netgear have come up with display charts and lists that show home networking products in a "good, better, best" continuum, with solutions based on what you want to do with your network.
But with wireless routers ranging from $35 to $160 and up, do we really need the best? What you are looking for is "good enough."
The real question many people want answered is, "Do we need a manufacturer's expensive router if we're playing online video games or watching Netflix?"
Here are the questions that really need answering when you are considering buying a wireless router.
DO I EVEN NEED ONE? To get an Internet signal from your Internet service provider's modem to a PC at the other end of the house, you'll need a wireless router.
In fact, because routers act as firewalls, helping to keep out malicious hackers, everyone should have a router, even if you have only one computer connected via Ethernet cable to the Internet.
Bottom line: Buy a router.
WHAT KIND SHOULD I BUY? The most common standards for routers are 802.11g and 802.11n. The N technology lets wireless signals travel farther than G, and can attain a higher transmission speed. Netgear's WNR2000 N router costs $50, just $15 more than its WGR614 G router.
So-called N+ routers denote nothing specific; it's a marketing term that implies the addition of various features depending on the manufacturer.
Bottom line: Always get an N router.
HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND? Some home routers cost as much as $400. Wireless N routers like the TRENDnet TEW-652BRP are available at B&H Photo for as little as $23; and the D-Link DIR-601 is $28 from Amazon.
Leo Laporte, host of the Tech Guy radio program, recommends always going for the least expensive. "The chip sets in different routers are all the same," he said. "It's the firmware that adds different capabilities." (Firmware is another techie word for the software.)
First Published April 7, 2011 12:00 am
