Is your home network up to speed?
As both user needs and technology have moved on, it may be time to look at upgrading your home network.
Asked if they have a network at home, most people will say ‘no’. But if you have a WiFi or 4G/5G router, you already do have a network. Some households will also have small switches and Ethernet cabling, through which they will be running outdoor access points, IP phones, or surveillance cameras. A switch is often the preferred way of connecting these network devices because they also need electricity to run – and delivering that through Ethernet cables, via PoE technology is neat, tidy and cost-effective.
But whether it’s wireless or wired, the question remains – is your home network fast enough and does it provide you with the reach and reliability you need?
Bandwidth hungry
If your WiFi router is more than two years old, it will almost certainly be WiFi 5 (802.11ac), which will give you speeds of up to 3.5Gbps. If it’s older, it could even be a WiFi 4 (802.11n) device, which would give you only 600Mpbs throughput. Now, there is nothing wrong with these technologies and many Zyxel Networks products that support them are still being used.
At the same time, wireless technology has moved on and, compared to the latest WiFi standards, 3.5Gbps is not that much bandwidth. It may not be sufficient to support everything you might want to do online simultaneously today. That might involve one or more members of the household taking part in video conference sessions with multiple participants, while several apps are open, and live streaming of video and audio for entertainment going on elsewhere in the house. All this might be happening while security and cloud backup apps are running in the background.
It all eats up bandwidth and as more users log onto the WiFi network with more devices, all the available space starts to get eaten up. For users trying to participate in video calls or play live interactive games, that’s going to mean jitter and delays, which is, frankly, not something that should be tolerated and certainly not when faster, better and perfectly affordable technologies are available.
A leap in performance
Upgrading to WiFi 6 or, even better, WiFi 7 will give you much more bandwidth. Up to 9.6Gbps for the former and an incredible 46Gbps theoretical maximum for WiFi 7. While you won’t get these stratospheric speeds in practice, what you will get with both technologies is quite a big leap on what you might have now. This makes it well worth the investment as it will help you to maximise productivity when you are working at home and make the most of online entertainment and gaming.
If you use an LTE router, while it’s not exactly the same scenario as WiFi, it’s also true that the technology has forged ahead and it may be a good time to upgrade. We have had 5G for some time now, of course, but households that use this technology are most likely to have a 4G device. Like WiFi 5, 4G can still do a good job, but the latest technology – 5G in this case – will do it much better.
In theory, 5G can get to speeds of up to 20Gbps, compared to the 1Gbps possible with 4G – and while here again, you should not expect to get anywhere near the theoretical maximum, 5G is going to be much faster – and you’ll really notice it.
Getting wired up
Similarly, you will benefit by upgrading wired connections. If you are using a small switch to connect different devices, it will probably be running at fast Ethernet speeds of 10/100Mbps. With business and domestic conferencing, cloud and entertainment services now using offering HD and UHD video, running multiple streams at the same time is going to cause some bottlenecks.
It makes sense therefore, to upgrade to one of the latest multi-gig switches, which can support much higher speeds of 1Gbps and 2.5Gbps – and in some cases, 10Gbps on the uplink to your external internet connection. Our switches designed for small office or home-use are uncomplicated and affordable.
