A router or gateway is typically a hardware device that regulates traffic between different networks, in a home this device regulates traffic between the internet (WAN or Wide Area Network) and your home network (LAN or Local Area Network).
Most people recognise that they have a modem in their home somewhere, either cable or ADSL. This Modem typically always comes with a router on board and often is referred to as a modem/router and provides the internet connection but also manages the internet signal distribution to the different wired or wireless devices within the home.
Having a combined modem/router is convenient because it is a one box device, often with wireless on board as well and typically has 4 or more connection points for wired devices. These devices are generally meant to be affordable for mass sales and work well with minimal expectation.
These days, however, the network is becoming a busy place, if you were to walk around your home and count the devices connecting to your network you might be surprised. This is taxing for your modem/router that is trying to operate as an internet signal provider, signal distribution point and a WIFI signal transceiver, and with lower quality hardware your signals can become congested resulting in slow or stalled speeds.
This can present itself particular to services we all enjoy like Netflix and music streaming, we can suffer a few seconds of lag when loading a web page but when in the middle of a tune or an episode of Game of Thrones a few seconds or more of pause can quickly become frustrating.
In many cases the cause will be the total internet speed available to your residence, however often you can give your network a boost by installing a dedicated router or gateway to accelerate your internal home network traffic.
At Surrounds we offer router solutions designed and built to handle audio and video traffic, we can also augment that with dedicated switching and WIFI options that will support all devices within the home plus remote logging of your network to ensure efficient coverage.
Ask us also about our WIFI enabled plug packs, these are great for devices that need to be restarted every now and again like Foxtel boxes, using an app on your phone you can restart the device manually or set it up as such so that it restarts the device automatically via a schedule.