The speed we need for working from home.

Raged against your internet speed? Ever felt like smashing your router as all the hard-earned money spent on better internet speed was never realised?

I felt it too! However, you can improve it now and achieve the promised speed in every corner of your home.

Before we understand internet speeds, router and different channels(2.4GHz and 5GHz) lets first get our basics right!
In India generally, two types of connection are provided by ISP’s for home connection (Internet Service Providers) —
1. Copper Cable connection
2. Optical Fiber or Fiber to the home (FTTH).

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Copper cable connection is an older way of transmitting data. Its primary use was to send voice calls data via electrical pulse from Point A to Point B. In this electrons are used to transmit information and hence making it prone to face interference from — electromagnetic waves, lightning, or radio signals.
Max speed that is achieved by researchers over the copper connection is 1Gbps while in India Airtel provides a speed up to 100Mbps in some areas with an average speed of ~40Mbps.

Photo by Yingchih on Unsplash

FTTH — Optical fiber is a better and highly efficient way of transmitting data with only a 3% loss of signal over the length of more than 100 meters. It uses photon to transmit data and as light is faster than electrical pulses, it can transmit more bits of data per second and offer higher bandwidth.
Max speed that researchers have achieved over fiber is 255Tbps, that’s terabits. In India now the speed of 1Gbps is offered by many ISP’s and one can get a plan for 250Mbps at the cost of ~1300INR with 500GB data.

Modem — It is a device that is used to connect to the internet. The modem does a simple job of modulating and demodulating signals. In layman terms, it decodes signal sent by ISP and encodes signals sent to ISP. That’s the only responsibility of Modem. Now, to provide wired and wireless internet at your place we need an additional device called as router. Nowadays ISP’s provide a router which has a modem in it and hence in most cases we do not need to buy an additional router.

Now that we are clear on mode of transmission lets learn about different bands offered by wireless routers.
In earlier days wireless router used to work on single-band. That means the router only emits the single high-frequency electromagnetic radiation at 2.4GHz.

Photo by Misha Feshchak on Unsplash

What is wrong with single-band routers?
The problem with a single-band router is that it can attain the max theoretical speed of 300Mbps on Wi-fi standard — 802.11n with a real-world speed of 150 Mbps.

Now, it may be good if there are only a couple of devices to consume the internet and that too for surfing or watching videos.

So what’s the solution?

To achieve faster speeds dual-band routers are used. Dual-band routers emit two types of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, the older 2.4GHz along with 5GHz. Now the biggest difference between two frequencies is the speed at which data is transmitted. 5GHz band provides data at a faster speed (theoretical on same standards — 900Mbps and real-world — 450Mbps) but only to a limited distance. Even the penetration through walls or doors of 5GHz is lower than that of 2.4GHz.

Now you might be wondering why is that, the simple answer to it is, the wavelength[the distance between two successive wave crests or troughs], which is inversely proportional to the frequency. So, higher the frequency shorter the wavelength.

It’s the same reason why red colour light is chosen on a traffic signal, to make it visible from long distances as it has the highest wavelength.

We are now clear with the basics and now its time to talk about real game — speed.

To cover it lets take a scenario — We buy a plan of ~INR 1300 from ISP — Jio with FUP of 500GB data and promised speed of 250Mbps but when connected on the provided router we are only getting a speed of 30Mbps. Shocking right? The game here is — Jio promotes that it provides the speed up to 1Gbps on its fiber connection but what it does not tell is, this speed is on the wired connection and not on wireless ones. That means you need to connect ethernet cable(RJ45) to get promised speed. They do so to lower the device cost they provide, which is a single band, cheap router.

Now there are two ways to overcome such scenarios
1. Use the wired connection.
2. Get a new third party router from the market which must at least be dual-band with a speed of 300Mbps on 2.4GHz and 450Mbps on 5GHz.

My preferred choice for such routers is from Linksys or Netgear, they are a bit costly from cheaper TP-Link version but then TP-Link is a Chinese company while former two are US-based.

Though Netgear has manufacturing units in Taiwan and Vietnam but major production is in mainland China. So, before ordering please check the country of origin. Linksys, however, has units in Taiwan and India.

While selecting the routers make sure you check the max speed and available bands. As some routers have tri-band but all 3 with working at same frequency of 2.4GHz, adding total speed offered, up to 900Mbps(300(1)+300(2)+300(3)).
Like this one -

Linksys E900 Wireless-N300 Router 300 Mbps Router - Linksys : Flipkart.com

Any dual-band router is good for a home with a size of 1500sqft.

For the homes, greater in size or multi-story one may need range extender or mesh routers. To know what exactly you need, check signal strength in areas where you need wifi signals. One can do so by downloading inSSIDer app on mac or windows from here —

Downloads - MetaGeek

For best speeds, one need a signal strength anywhere between -20dBm to -45dBm. At these strengths, one will usually get the max speed of the connection.
As signals keep getting weak, speed will keep getting slow. Any signal strength below -65dBm will cause issues, interruption and slow speeds.
What makes things worst is the VPN you need to connect to do your professional work.

If the signal strength of your wi-fi lies somewhere in between -50dBm to -65dBm, you can go for range-extenders from the above companies I recommended.

How range-extenders work?

Range-extenders just connect to an existing wi-fi network and blindly relays data to/from the router. They broadcast new network name and whenever you move along the house you will have to manually switch between range-extenders and primary router depending which is better placed to provide stronger signals.

Problem with range-extenders -

Wireless signals work in one direction at a time, it can either send or receive information making it half-duplex or semiduplex system and because of this range-extenders sometime slow things down.

However, new-age range-extenders are dual-band and support MU-MIMO.

Note — MU-MIMO[Multi User — Multi Input Multi Output] is good for homes where simultaneous usage is dense, as it increases the network’s throughput.

So, if you believe you will need a range-extender, make sure you buy router-extender pair as that will make things smooth to run with minimal issues.

Now, if you have a signal strength anything below -70dBm[dead zone], I would recommend you to buy a mesh router.

Mesh routers, what?

Mesh routers basically replace your existing wi-fi system and create a network throughout your home through multiple routers in different dead-zones.
Mesh routers are a set of base-unit and multiple satellite units.

Base Unit — Router which connects to your existing modem-router combo generally provided by ISP through an ethernet cable to have an extended wired connection.

Satellite Units- Devices which connect to base unit generally through dedicated backhaul channel wirelessly.

Benefits of mesh

1. Single SSID with smart switching between devices(base or satellite) whichever is closest and able to provide better speeds.
2. Dedicated 5GHz band to establish a connection between base and satellite devices.
3. MU-MIMO support.
4. Implicit beamforming — When you want signals more directed towards your device instead of spreading in all directions in the room. This actually helps to achieve better speeds when you are connected on the VPN as it provides focused data transmission than without what you get without beamforming.
5. Super easy 5-minute setup through an app.
6. Guest wi-fi option.
7. Parental control.

So which device to buy?
My recommendation is for devices which are tri-band(2.4GHz+5GHz+5GHz) as one band will be dedicated to relay information from the base while others to provide the speed you paid up for.
With mesh router, you can actually achieve the same speed as you would on ethernet cable throughout your home.

One may need multiple satellite units depending on the size of the house and number of floors but for a decent house size of 3500sqft, I believe one base unit and one satellite device will suffice.

My pick is Netgear Orbi — RBK50 for speeds up to 1Gbps. For smaller homes and lesser speeds, you can choose from the wider range of devices provided by Netgear.

If you believe you have more signal-blocking spaces and penetration might be an issue, I would recommend to go for Linksys Velop.

For me personally, mesh router resolved the issue of unavailability of 5GHz band at different zones in the house and allowed me to use the internet at a maximum speed of my connection.

Want to be future safe?

My recommended devices are compatible with Wifi5 only. If you want to be future proof and wanted to work on speeds upto 6Gbps, I would recommend you to buy router or mesh routers which are Wifi6 compatible. As the demand for them is not high, they are super expensive and can cost anything between INR 27k to 65k.
All of wifi 6 devices are backwards compatible and will work with your existing connection and devices. However, to achieve its true capability you must have a device which is wifi6 compatible.

Next time your ISP try to cheat with cheap routers say this to them —

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Till next time!