Nowadays your home network isnt complete without a wireless router. But there are so many out there which one do you choose? Most people will go with a well known vendor and choose one at random but its worthwhile considering a few things before you do the same!

For the average home user the most important parts of wireless networking are security, range and reliability. You want your wireless network to always be up and available, you want to be able access it from the other side of the house and you want to make sure its secure.

To N or not to N, that is the question. – One of the most important considerations for most people is whether to go for a wireless N router or not. Wireless N is the latest IEEE addition to the wireless networking world and it offers speeds of up to 300Mbps with big improvements on range as well. Practically speaking you are unlikely to get speeds of higher than 100Mbps with wireless N but this is still a big improvement on Wireless G which offers 54Mbps (with practical speeds of probably around half that).

So surely with much faster speeds and better range you should go for Wireless N every time right? Well not so fast, wireless N is going to cost you more, but not only that you need to make sure that the wireless adaptors you are using for it are compatible, otherwise your wireless network will just run in wireless G mode and you will never make use of the N, making it completely pointless!

Ask yourself this as well, do you really need those faster speeds? Remember that your internet connection will always be your bottleneck, unless you have a 100Mbps internet connection (very unlikely) then normal web browsing, video streaming and downloading of files from the internet is not going to be any quicker on wireless N than it would be on G. Again, ask yourself is range has ever been an issue? If everywhere in your house gives you at least a good signal then is the improved range going to mean anything to you?

These are things you should ask yourself before shelling out the extra money for wireless N, it will not miraculously speed up your internet connection, remember that! If you frequently transfer big files within your network wirelessly then the upgrade to N will make a difference, but these kinds of scenarios aren’t very common.

Choosing the manufacture - As with everything you should always choose a reputable networking manufacture. In my opinion you should only consider one of the following three – Linksys, Netgear or D-Link. I’m now going to follow up with a brief review of one wireless router from each manufacture.

Linksys WRT160N Wireless N router – One of the much cheaper versions of the wireless N range, in fact I have seen these on amazon.com for around $50, absolute bargain for wireless N technology! The wrt160N is very sleekly designed and uses MIMO (Multiple in multiple out) technology to provide great range and speeds.

In performance testing this little beauty was able to give me over 100mbps between two wireless connected devices which were quite far apart from each other. The security features are more than adequate for home users but at the same time the standard suite of WEP and WPA/2. You also get a very effective SPI firewall that doubles up with the NAT feature to give you a good home security device.

Price: $50

Netgear WNR2000 - Similar features to the Linksys one but with a few extras such as automatic updating router software, parental controls and an energy efficient power supply! All good and well but how about the performance?

Well inter LAN speeds were very good, well over 100mbps and the range is very impressive indeed, I was able to connect with a very good signal strength at over 30 metres away with no direct line of sight. Security wise the WNR2000 is very effective and offers an IDS (Intrusion detection system) firewall that stood up well against many different hack attempts.

Price: $59

D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N – Same N technology as the above two but this time you get Gigabit LAN ports as opposed to the 100mbps standard ones. This can make a big difference if you have wired devices and do a lot of LAN gaming or file transfers.

Not only that but with the DIR-655 you get a nifty little QOS (quality of service) feature that priorities traffic based on certain factors, for example online gaming and Skype calls, stuff that is a bit more critical than just general web browsing. This can come in handy if you have times where many users are connecting to the wireless network. The additional features do come with an additional price tag though.

Price: $80

In summary you can’t go wrong with any of these three routers here and they are probably the best out there for general home and office use. Wireless N doesn’t have to be that expensive as you can see and unless you are on a serious budget it might well be worth considering.