Purchasing a router for your small business network is not the same as purchasing one for your home. This Small Business Computing article identifies six basic features that every small business router should support. These features increase network performance and help to ensure secure and efficient network operations.
“Gigabit Ethernet Switch: One of the most cost effective upgrades you can make to your small business network is to upgrade it to Gigabit Ethernet. Most consumer level routers come with an integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet switch, capable of operating at a maximum speed of 100 megabits per second (Mbps).
“A router equipped with Gigabit Ethernet significantly increases the speed of data transfers over your small business network. The benefits of this will be most noticeable when transferring large files or in LAN environments connected to SMB servers or NAS devices. To achieve this dramatic performance boost, your computers must also be equipped with Gigabit Ethernet ports; and most new systems are.
“Dual Band Wireless Network: Most consumer level routers support only a single wireless network. For this reason, wireless small business networks typically operate in mixed-mode; some computers have 802.11b or 802.11g access while others have high-speed 802.11n access. The problem with this setup is that just one computer accessing the network at an extremely reduced data rate can significantly diminish the performance of every client on the wireless network.”
