If you want to change your router for home internet connectione because it’s too old or you don’t want use the one provided by your ISP you should value various parameters. Over the brand (D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, FRITZ!Box to cite the most famous) there are many models with various features. A list of some features you must consider that could help to choose your new home router:
– wireless or not
depends if you need an ethernet only connection or also WiFi enabled. In this second case you must see the class: b (11 Mb/s), g (54 Mb/s) and n (450 Mb/s); frequency: 2,4 GHz or 5 GHz (prefer dual band routers) and the supported protocols for WiFi protection: WEP, WPA, WPA2.
– consumption (Watt)
to save energy.
– IPv6 protocol support
soon the IPv4 protocol will be replaced by IPv6 protocol which can handle much more IP addresses.
– throughput
is the maximum possible quantity of data that can be transmitted without loosing packets. If you are lucky and search on net you can find various throughput tests of many router models.
– QoS settings
routers that have QoS (Quality of Service) controls allows to define priority classes to privilege a determined service (VoIP, file sharing, gaming, multimedia streaming)
– USB ports
to connect other devices, eg. printers, NAS.
– customization
routers that allows to flash custom firmwares that offers better/more perfomances/features like DD-WRT, an opensource Linux based firmware. On Comparitech an article will guide you about the set up OpenVPN on DD-WRT and there is a useful list of the best VPNs for DD-WRT routers.
