Check for you: differences between home-level wireless routers

Enterprise-level and home-level wireless routers differ in the selection of wireless routers. The following article will introduce the features, performance, and shopping points of home-level wireless routers. For more information, see the following section.

Advantages of home-level wireless routers:

As an important product for the establishment of a wireless LAN, wireless routers seem to be a luxury for home use. However, the price of wireless routers has been greatly reduced, so we can accept the price.

The hardware function of a home-level wireless router is a combination of a popular Broadband Router and a Wireless AP, that is, the access and Internet sharing of several to more than a dozen wired and wireless hosts, therefore, the firewall and VPN functions do not require high requirements, and the hardware configuration does not require high configuration, because we do not need to drive dozens or even hundreds of hosts.

We should consider such products in terms of economic applicability, stable performance, safety and reliability, convenient use, and cost effectiveness. However, the market conditions have surprised us. Due to the competitive pressure, some manufacturers can sell products with high performance at home prices, however, we should also have a pair of bright eyes. It is better that they come from the hands of famous masters, so that we can purchase them with confidence.

This article is to let us know the main points of choosing a home-level wireless router. We define that the prices of home-level products are about 1000 yuan or less than 1000 yuan, hope to help readers who plan to build a home-based wired wireless shared access LAN.

Key points for purchasing home-level wireless routers:

We can consider the following aspects for the purchase of home-level wireless router products.

1. Wireless Standards

Currently, the 802.11b standard has become a popular standard for wireless LAN. Because the 802.11g standard is compatible with the 802.11b standard and has a higher speed, it will replace the 802.11b standard, however, for home users, the 802.11g standard products may still be expensive, and of course there are exceptions. The marketplace already has a consumer M wireless router for sale, such as the us netgear Super G consumer M wireless router. Of course, if you don't care about the price, you can consider it if you don't want to protect it.

For common network applications, 802.11b is enough. If you want to experience high-speed wireless connection in advance, you should first choose the 802.11g standard, but if you want to use the 802.11g standard, you will be able to get high-speed wireless network adapter. Otherwise, the 802.11b standard and the 802.11g standard are mixed, although compatible, but it will run at the 802.11b standard speed. The 802.11a standard is not very popular and cannot be compatible with the above two standards, so we should not consider it.

2. Product Brand

Wireless routers include the ability to share broadband Internet access and the ability to connect wireless clients, so the performance of the products is not good. We should select products from famous factories, such as NETGEAR, Linksys, and XINGNET, which are produced by brand-name CPUs and wireless chips due to large manufacturers, the performance and power of the product are guaranteed, and the number of connected hosts, Security Solutions, wireless coverage, and configuration management are also guaranteed. The software of the product has the opportunity to upgrade, to expand new features.

3. transmit power and antenna gain

The performance of the Wireless AP part of the wireless router is largely determined by the transmit power of the local machine and the gain of the antenna. The maximum transmit power of a wireless router is generally 20 DM, but the products on the market may not reach this value. Of course, the closer we choose, the better. In a relatively closed home environment, the gain of the Zhongtian line is also very important. This is determined by the microwave RF technology adopted by the wireless router. It can only be transmitted in a straight line and has poor diffraction capability, poor ability to penetrate walls.

According to the general experience, the 2DBI gain antenna can penetrate two walls, but the speed will decrease very badly. Therefore, we should try to purchase products with high-gain antennas. If not, we may need a wireless router with detachable antennas. The antenna is detachable so that we can easily replace the gain antenna.

If the room distribution in the room is complex, the signals sent by the home-level wireless router may not be well received by the client, you can replace it with a high-gain antenna to enhance effective signal coverage. In addition, if you are interested in building wireless connected homes, you also need wireless routers with detachable antennas. In addition, in the case of the same transmit power and antenna gain, the dual antenna design can also improve the indoor signal coverage, although it cannot multiply the antenna gain.

4. Security Solution

For security issues, enterprise-level and home-level wireless routers have two security solutions: Broadband routers and wireless access. The most basic security of the Broadband Router is that the working principle of the Broadband Router is unique to the NAT network address to pull), through address translation to hide the IP address of the internal host, others include service port filtering, 802.1X user identity authentication, VPN, and well-known SPI status packet detection.

Wireless LAN generally has the following security measures:

1. WEP Wired Equivalent encryption ).

2. The identifier of the SSID service area.

3. filter the MAC address of the wireless client device on the user side.

4. Supports standard 802.1x Security Authentication Protocol

5. VPN. Encryption is generally used to accept authorized access, but encryption and decryption operations may consume a lot of resources and affect performance.

SSID hiding may be an efficient wireless security solution. MAC address filtering allows you to set the MAC hardware address of the NIC that connects to the host on the wireless router side to achieve access control. It is also easier to set up a small-scale network and requires little work. 802.1x authentication is suitable for large-scale networks. It is based on user identity authentication, so it is the safest, but this requires a dedicated authentication server. The VPN solution is mainly used for sensitive data, which is also a technology used by the enterprise network. It is not suitable for users here. In our home environment, security measures such as NAT, port filtering, WEP encryption, SSID, and MAC address filtering are sufficient.

5. Installation Management

For ordinary home users, network knowledge is limited. Therefore, it is best to have a concise browser-based configuration management interface and smart Configuration Wizard for the products we purchase. It is better to have all Chinese characters. Finally, the product can upgrade the software.