2018 Spring & Garden

2018 Spring Home & Garden LINCOLN DAILY NEWS May 2, 2018 Page 7 delivered in two ways: the speed of the router’s processor and by the number of frequency bands that the router uses. Inexpensive routers have slow, clunky processors that often get overloaded and cause you to have to reboot your router often (a sign that your router is getting old or is overloaded may be that it has to be rebooted multiple times a week). These routers, usually referred to as N routers, are adequate for households that have fewer users who are using the internet for vanilla purposes: checking email, browsing the web, and getting on Facebook. A newer class of routers, AC wireless routers, deliver WiFi in two frequency bands rather than one (2.4GHz and 5GHz), and are about three times faster than N routers. In addition, AC routers generally have better and more antennas, and are able to better penetrate all the areas of your home. More frequency bands allows for less interference with your neighbors’WiFi routers, and AC routers are much more robust because they use higher quality, faster processors, allowing for more users using more sophisticated internet applications without bogging down or bombing-out. AC routers are about triple the price of N routers, but will probably last longer and be less annoying in the long run. The signal a typical wireless router gives out generally reaches about seventy-five (75) feet in each direction horizontally from the router. However, obstructions like walls, furnaces, and sometimes even electrical wiring can limit the distance WiFi can penetrate. Homes with steel or aluminum siding often prevent the WiFi signal from having any signal strength outside the home: on the porch, on the patio or in the yard. In addition to having restrictions for horizontal reach, WiFi has very poor reach vertically. Families with multi-level homes find that if the wireless router is on the first level of the house, they don’t have reliable WiFi in the basement or on the second floor. The addition of a second router on your second floor can alleviate that problem. The second router is set to a different frequency from your first floor router, and is fed via Ethernet cable from your first floor router for best service. How to extend your wifi range with another router Finally, there is no perfect internet service. Satellite internet service tends to have problems with “rain fade” whenever a rain storm interferes with its signal path, and have terrible problems with “latency.” DSL can have similar problems especially in rural areas when rain gets in the telephone cable. Continued ■ ■