Home wireless networking used to be pretty easy. You’d plug in a wireless router and if you were lucky you’d get a decent signal 20 feet away. Things were slow and spotty, but they were easy. Then came the alphabet soup of 802.11 wireless standards a, b, g, pre-n, and n, and e-i-e-i-o. Just to make things more complicated you can tack on MIMO (Finding MIMO?), Super-G (isn’t that a ski race), RangeBooster (I think my oven has this feature), XtremeN, and GigaBitMaxBlastSomethingorOther.
Most people are running 802.11 g networks at home. I’ve tried several g wireless routers from Dlink, Belkin, Netgear, Actiontec, generic Compusa brand,
Then my router broke and I ran to my local computer super store to buy a new one. After 10 minutes of staring at all the choices and letters I settled on one I’d never heard of before. It was a Zyxel X-550 MIMO router. It had 2 antennas and more importantly was on sale for ½ price. So I figured, all the other routers I’ve ever had all worked about the same so why spend more to get a “name” brand.
Boy was I wrong. I plugged in the Zyxel and set everything up. It was pretty plug and play. The interface was as easy to use as any of the other brands. It had MAC filtering security, firewall protection, port forwarding, and all the other usual features. What it didn’t have was dead spots. Suddenly I could get a strong signal anywhere in my house, even outside on my deck. My laptop’s speed was magically almost as fast as my desktop.
I didn’t think this was right, so I decided to call up Zyxel tech support. It was 11pm so I expected to get a voice mail, but a real person answered. I was even more shocked when the tech was knowledgeable and easy to work with. He assured me that nothing was wrong, that the X-550 was supposed to eliminate dead and slow spots. I am not one that usually cares too much about brands, but now I’m officially a Zyxel fan.
Comment Preview