THE LINKSYS A HARDCORE IS A GAMING ROUTER

Every modern Wi-Fi router has some type of quality-of-service (QoS) feature that assigns different priorities to different types of Internet traffic. But Linksys says the WRT32X – a 802.11n/802.11ac MU-MIMO router – is highly optimised to recognise lag-sensitive traffic like games. The secret ingredient is Rivet Networks’ Killer Prioritization Engine.

The firm told us the technology uses heuristic logic to determine which network traffic is gaming traffic, and then assigns that data the highest priority. As the company’s marketing officer, Bob Grim, said, “A Microsoft Windows update packet shouldn’t be treated as just as important as a gaming packet. We’ll never queue a gaming packet, for example, because it’s latency dependent.”

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the WRT32X looks fantastic. Even router companies want in on CES’s PC-enthusiast action.