If you have a router for many years, you may have to replace that old router with a new one, however, we must differentiate between a router that is obsolete and an old router . In the first case, it means that we have a router that is unable to meet the minimum speed requirements, so we cannot get the contracted Internet speed. In the second case, an old router is a router that is already many years old, but that is capable of providing us with all the contracted Internet speed, however, it is advisable to buy a new one to enjoy the latest improvements. Today in this article we are going to explain how to know if your router is old and if you should change it.
Features you should check
To know if our router is old, we must review the main technical characteristics of that equipment in question, to determine if it is already an old router and there are more current models that will provide us with better coverage, higher wireless and wired speed.
Compatible with Wi-Fi 6 networks
At the end of 2018, manufacturers began to launch their routers with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, a standard that has marked a before and after in wireless networks, since this standard specifically focuses on providing the best efficiency of the wireless network. Until a year later, at the end of 2019, manufacturers did not start releasing models with the affordable Wi-Fi 6 standard, so many users did not buy the first models with Wi-Fi 6 but they did buy these cheaper second models (and with less benefits, logically).
If your current router does not have the Wi-Fi 6 standard, and taking into account that four years have passed since the launch of the first models, we can assure you that you have an old router. You may have decided in recent years to buy a top-of-the-range WiFi 5 model, instead of buying a mid-range WiFi 6 model, since the price is similar between these routers. In this case, you do not have a router that is too old, but our recommendation is that you value the acquisition of a model with Wi-Fi 6 that is affordable, to have greater wireless speed and coverage, in addition, today we already have a large number of WiFi clients that support this new standard, not like 4 years ago that clients were conspicuous by their absence.
Next, we explain the main differences between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5, so you can see the improvements you could get:
- OFDMA and MU-MIMO to optimize the wireless network when we have dozens of connected devices. These two characteristics are the most important of this standard, and will allow us to have the greatest possible efficiency.
- Higher actual speed. This new standard allows us to achieve up to 1,300Mbps of real speed without many problems, as long as both the router and the WiFi clients support 160MHz of channel width. Today a WiFi card compatible with 160MHz is worth around 30-40 euros, such as the Intel AX200 or the Intel AX210 that supports Wi-Fi 6E.
- Less energy consumption in clients: this new standard has Target Wake Time, so we can put wireless clients on standby, ideal for smartphones, tablets or computers with battery.
As you can see, the improvements are important enough to consider whether to replace our router. Also, Wi-Fi Mesh systems with this new standard work really well.
Multigigabit ports for LAN
With the launch of the first top-of-the-range routers with the Wi-Fi 6 standard, manufacturers took the opportunity to incorporate a 2.5G Multigigabit port for the LAN/WAN. This means that we will not only have the typical Gigabit Ethernet ports, but we will also have a very fast 2.5G port, with the aim of connecting a high-performance NAS server or our desktop computer to share files on a local network.
Multigigabit networks have been a turning point in home and professional networks, before the launch of the NBASE-T standard we had speeds of 1Gbps or 10Gbps. The negative part of 10G networks is that they have a much higher cost, and their internal components get quite hot. Thanks to 2.5G networks, we are going to have a somewhat higher cost than the usual Gigabit networks, but it is worth it because we will get up to 300MB/s real in the local network.
If your router doesn’t have a 2.5G multigigabit port, it’s probably old. If you have a NAS with this type of connectivity, our recommendation is that you buy a new router with this type of connectivity, in order to take full advantage of the speed of the local network and Wi-Fi.
High-speed USB 3.0 ports
Although we also have USB 3.0 ports on Wi-Fi 5 routers, we usually had a big bottleneck due to the main processor of the router in question. The vast majority of routers with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard also incorporate powerful Dual-Core, Tri-Core and even Quad-Core processors, with which we can achieve read and write speeds on USB ports of more than 100MB/ s without any problem. While top-of-the-line Wi-Fi 5 routers were capable of around 70MB/s, the newer models allow for speeds of up to 180MB/s with no issues, excellent performance for turning your router into a basic file-sharing NAS server. .
As you have seen, depending on the characteristics of your router, we can define it as old, even if it perfectly meets your Internet speed needs. In the case of changing to a new model and retiring the previous one, you will be able to give it a second life, especially if it is an ASUS or AVM FRITZ!Box brand, because you could use it as a wireless network amplifier by integrating it into the Mesh network.