JUNE 2022 PCWorld 97itself—then search the web for info about
which version of Wi-Fi it supports. Here are
the major Wi-Fi versions to know about:
802.11a/b/g: Extremely old and almost
certainly the source of all your Wi-Fi
problems.
802.11a/b/g/n (or just 802.11n):
Outdated at this point and a solid candidate
for replacement. Many of these routers only
support a single frequency band that’s slower
and more congestion-prone, and “dual-
band” variants have limited range on the
faster 5 GHz frequency band.
802.11ac (also marketed as Wi-Fi 5):
This is not the latest standard, but it’s still
widely available even in some high-
performance routers.
802.11ax (or Wi-Fi 6): Routers using this
standard started shipping in late 2020, so
your router is likely
quite new.
Wi-Fi 6E:
Congrats, you
probably just bought
a new router (and
maybe even spent
$1,200 on it [fave.
co/384decg]).
Wi-Fi versions
alone aren’t an
indicator of
quality—a cheap
Wi-Fi 6 router can be
worse than a
high-end mesh system with Wi-Fi 5—but each
successive version has introduced new
features that improve connectivity, and we’ve
generally seen a push toward better
performance over time.TRY SOME SMALLER
ROUTER FIXES
Just to rehash a tip I discussed back in July
(fave.co/3wsL2Jn), sometimes changing your
router’s channel and bandwidth settings can
work wonders for reducing Wi-Fi interference,
especially if you’re seeing inconsistent speeds
on devices that aren’t too far from the router.
By digging into the router’s settings, you can
bypass automatic channel selection and find a
channel that might be less congested.
You can also try some other little tweaks,
like getting your router off the ground andChanging your Wi-Fi channel and bandwidth can make a big difference.