VIEW FROM THE LABS
THE WORLD OF WI-FI IS MORE ACCESSIBLE THAN EVER, BUT IT STILL TAKES SOME TECHNICAL NOUS TO GET THE MOST FROM A ROUTER
It’s funny, really, how domestic Wi-Fi has become a universal, unquestioned part of our lives, while the technology that underpins it is so complicated and obscure. On pages 76 and 77, we set out the key points to consider when choosing a router, but if you genuinely want to understand how it all works, I hear that Imperial College London offers a decent MSc on the subject.
At the same time, if you simply want to watch MasterChef in the bath, you don’t even need to read the manual. Most modern routers present ruthlessly streamlined setup procedures that entirely skip over technical matters such as wireless channels, security schemas and so forth. You can breeze through the configuration wizard in three or four clicks, and at the end of it you’re rewarded with a fully functional wireless network.
It’s unarguably a good thing that the wonders of wireless aren’t reserved for the likes of Linus Torvalds and Tim Berners-Lee. Individuals are hugely empowered by being able to get online on their own terms.
It’s also good news for those of us who operate as unofficial help desk technicians for our friends and families. In the past decade or so, I’ve noticed that incoming router-related cries for assistance have dried up completely – and to that I say hurrah. There’s a certain satisfaction in being the person who “knows about computers”, but the act of troubleshooting someone else’s networking issues – especially remotely – is something I really don’t miss.
Yet there’s a downside, and it’s this: almost invariably, the easy setup route is the only one and, as you step through it, you never know what decisions the wizard is silently making on your behalf. You’d hope that everything would be configured for optimal performance, but we’ve found that’s not always the case. For example, all of this month’s
Asus routers set themselves up with 160MHz channel support switched off by default, while for some reason the Netgear Nighthawk RAX80 comes with MU-MIMO disabled.
Such issues can be fixed after the fact, but you need to know what you’re looking for. The relevant settings are buried away in the management interface, with no particular indication of their significance, or the fact that they’re in a low-performance state.
So yes, it’s great that Wi-Fi has become a commodity. If uncle Kenneth emails you to say that he’s seen a great deal on such-and-such a router, you can tell him with a clear conscience that it will do what he needs, and you don’t even have to bother looking up the model number.
Even so, it still takes specialist knowledge to get the best from the hardware. And that doesn’t just apply to the technical aspects of Wi-Fi 6: as we’ve seen, price, features and real-world performance can vary considerably from model to model, often in surprising ways. So if you want to make the right purchasing decision, you need to be clued up. That’s always been the Labs ethos, and while technology keeps on evolving, it applies this month just as much as it did in the first ever issue of
PC Pro back in 1994.
“I’ve noticed that incoming router-related cries for assistance have dried up completely – and to that I say hurrah”