As Fiber service become more readily available, users are slowly discovering that their current home wiring and equipment can’t handle the blazing fast speeds. Read on to find out how we can help!
Several bottle necks can exist in a common home or office setup. Let’s look at the three most common issues, old wiring, consumer-grade networking equipment, and outdated network cards.
Old wiring
Most homes built before the mid-2000’s likely didn’t have an architect who could have predicted our always-on, cord cutting, fiber-to-the-home lifestyle of the future. Due to this, most homes are only equipped with copper phone cables (CAT3). While this worked fine as the country transitioned from dial-up internet to ADSL , these same lines are woefully under equipped to handle current speeds. Don’t worry though, most homes can easily be upgraded to handle the faster speeds. By adding CAT6 cable to your home or office, clients are future-proofed for speeds up to 10Gbps. Get a quote and take the first step to upgrading your home or office today!
Consumer Grade Networking Equipment
If you’re like most people, reading up on the latest and greatest in enterprise grade equipment isn’t your idea of a good time. Instead, you or an office mate walked into the nearest big box electronics supplier’s and asked for a “wireless router”. In return, you received a small black box that is bad at both “wireless” and “routing”.
Consumer grade equipment often takes the all-in-one approach, placing a wireless access point, a firewall, a router, a dhcp server, and anything else they can think of, in one box. While this format is cheap and provides the minimum quality of service, it’s also the reason clients complain of frequent slow internet, forced router restarts, or total loss of connectivity.
To combat this, McAfee Media Solutions only uses dedicated enterprise grade hardware. This means one box for routing, dedicated wireless access points, and another for handling everything else. While the equipment may be slightly more than the consumer equivalent from your local big blue box store, the time and energy saved in repairs and maintenance more than make up for the difference. This also insures that our clients always have the fastest, most reliable connections available. Get a quote and take the first step toward upgrading to dedicated enterprise grade equipment today!
Outdated Network Cards
Wired and wireless network cards can often be old and outdated. These cards are responsible for your computer’s ability to talk to your wired or wireless routers. In many cases, as fiber becomes readily available, older wired and wireless cards can’t keep up with the speeds.
Luckily, wireless cards in laptops and wired cards in desktops are easily upgradeable! If you’ve recently changed your equipment or speeds with your ISP, and didn’t see an increase in your internet speeds, reach out and our technicians will be glad to verify your current wired and wireless compatibility.
Photo credit: Jeff Keyzer Image used under CreativeCommons BY-SA 2.0