FED UP WITH SLOW WI-FI?
FED UP WITH SLOW WI-FI?
One of the main reasons why your Wi-Fi at home is slow is because of congestion. Congestion occurs when there are multiple Wi-Fi networks in an area. Each Wi-Fi network has to be assigned a Wi-Fi channel and there are a limited number of Wi-Fi channels to go around. When multiple networks are using the same channel, performance degrades. This is the main cause of slow Wi-Fi in densely populated places like Singapore.
This problem can be solved if your router has a feature called Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS). However, this feature is rarely found in the routers that are normally bundled by the ISPs when we sign up for fiber broadband plans.
Fortunately, Linksys and StarHub change all that with the new EA8100-AH Max-Stream AC2600 MU- MIMO Gigabit WiFi router, which happens to have DFS. StarHub is the first in the world to offer the EA8100 router. It was made available on 7 July 2018 to all customers who sign up for or renew their StarHub 1Gbps Fibre Broadband and HomeHub Plus plans.
It is a dual-band AC2600- class router, which means it supports speeds of up to 800Mbps on its 2.4GHz network and 1,733Mbps on its 5GHz network. More importantly, the EA8100 router was specially developed to have DFS so that it can solve the problem of Wi-Fi congestion.
WHAT IS DFS AND WHY IT MATTERS
In Singapore, there are 25 Wi-Fi channels in the 5GHz spectrum but only nine of them are available for public use. The remaining 16 are reserved for use by government services. Considering that only nine channels are available to the public and how densely populated we are, it is inevitable that our Wi-Fi is especially congested.
The EA8100 router gets around this problem with DFS by tapping into the restricted 5GHz spectrum. It is able to do so because the EA8100 router constantly scans the environment for nearby radar, and when there is one in the vicinity, it automatically vacates the DFS spectrum and uses one of the nine publicly available Wi-Fi channels instead.
In tests conducted by Linksys, it was found that the EA8100 router was as much as 90% faster when using the less congested DFS 5GHz spectrum!
LINKSYS SMART WI-FI
The EA8100 router also features Linksys Smart Wi-Fi, which allows users to remotely control and manage their routers using the Linksys app from anywhere in the world as long as they have a data connection.
This nifty app lets users change their wireless network settings, see who’s connected to their network, assign priority connection to devices, and set usage restrictions via Parental Controls settings.
As part of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi, the EA8100 router also features automatic firmware updating, which saves you the trouble of having to check and update your firmware manually. More importantly, this ensures that your router is always updated with the latest features and security patches.
To find out more about the Linksys EA8100-AH Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit WiFi router, please visit https://www.linksys.com/sg/p/P-EA8100/.
