Buying a new router will always involve a leap of faith. You can read all sorts of reviews-PCWorld reviews both Wi-Fi mesh systems and the latest Wi-Fi 6E routers-but even the best advice isn’t one-size-fits-all. Ultimately, though, there’s no way to tell for sure if a new router will work without trying it yourself. Of course, moving your router to a more central location in the home can help, but that would likely require having the cable company rewire your home internet connection. Chances are the improvements will be minimal. You can also try some other little tweaks, like getting your router off the ground and clearing some space around it-but I wouldn’t start rearranging your room for the router’s sake. By digging into your router’s settings, you can bypass automatic channel selection and find a channel that might be less congested. Just to rehash a tip I discussed back in July, sometimes changing your router’s channel and bandwidth settings can work wonders for reducing Wi-Fi interference, especially if you’re seeing inconsistent speeds on devices that aren’t too far from the router. Wi-Fi versions alone aren’t an indicator of quality-a cheap Wi-Fi 6 router can be worse than a high-end mesh system with Wi-Fi 5-but each successive version has introduced new features that improve connectivity, and we’ve generally seen a push toward better performance over time. Wi-Fi 6E: Congrats, you probably just bought a new router.802.11ax (or Wi-Fi 6): Routers using this standard started shipping in late 2020, so your router is likely quite new.802.11ac (also marketed as Wi-Fi 5): Not the latest standard, but still widely available even in some high-performance routers. Many of these routers only support a single frequency band that’s slower and more congestion-prone, and “dual-band” variants have limited range on the faster 5 GHz frequency band. 802.11a/b/g/n (or just 802.11n): Outdated at this point and a solid candidate for replacement.802.11a/b/g: Extremely old and almost certainly the source of all your Wi-Fi problems.
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