Labs

Wireless routers

There are several aspects to consider when choosing a wireless router. First, a router should be easy to configure. By the time you have finished the configuration process, you should have an internet connection and a secure, reliable wireless network. We follow each router's setup instructions to ensure that they achieve this.

Performance is incredibly important, both in terms of throughput and stability at various ranges. To see how the wireless routers perform we configure them with WPA2 security (or WPA if not available) and time a 100MB file transfer across the network from a notebook to a PC connected by Ethernet at 1m, 10m and 25m. We do this three times and take the average. Each test is run on both a standard Centrino notebook and with one of the manufacturer's own-brand adaptors to take advantage of any turbo modes available.

If the results are lower than we'd expect or the signal is unreliable, we change the wireless channel and other advanced settings to get the best throughput.

Finally, advanced settings such as port forwarding and QoS should be easy to change, so we spend a lot of time with each router's web-based management page. We note the results of this in our reviews.