Jason Fitzpatrick / How-To Geek
You should upgrade your router every 3-5 years to ensure access to new Wi-Fi
technology, improved hardware, and consistent security updates.
Nobody likes wasting money, and itâs easy to ignore your homeâs Wi-Fi
router right up until it dies of old age. But there are many good reasons you
should upgrade your router before then. Letâs look at them and how often you
should be upgrading.
You Should Upgrade Your Wi-Fi Router
Before discussing router replacement timetables, letâs first talk about why
upgrading the humble Wi-Fi router is worthwhile. In the tech world, there are
often clear and easy-to-understand pivotal moments where upgrading just seems
like the obvious thing to do with clear, tangible benefits.
For example, the jump from basic cell phones to smartphones had a clear
benefit. The same with the jump from standard-definition TVs to high-definition
models. Those changes were easy to understand and see with your own eyes.
Even upgrading from an old smartphone to a newer one is easy to justify when
looking at the bigger, brighter screen, improved battery life, and snappy app
load times. Itâs the under-the-hood stuff that is easy to overlook, like the
upgraded Wi-Fi radio in the phone.
This is exactly why poor Wi-Fi routers often get left to gather dust for years
and years while everything else in the house gets upgraded around them. But
there are plenty of (often ignored) signs you should upgrade your Wi-Fi router.
Here are some compelling reasons your old router is long overdue for an update.
New Wi-Fi Routers Get Years of Security Updates and Support
Old routers donât get security updates. Whatever security flaws are still
there when the last update is released will be there until the day the router
is finally retired.
And itâs not just Wi-Fi security you should be concerned about, although an
upgrade to WPA3, the best Wi-Fi security you can use at the moment, is always
nice.
For most households, the Wi-Fi router is an all-in-one network device that
handles both the Wi-Fi access point side of things and the security and routing
of the entire network. So if your router is seriously out-of-date with
unpatched vulnerabilities, itâs not just the neighbor kid stealing your Wi-Fi
and torrenting movies you have to worry about. Itâs the internet side of the
router too, which is ultimately a bigger problem as the potential attacker
doesnât even need to be in range of your Wi-Fi router to cause problems.
People should be just as shocked and concerned about old Wi-Fi router
vulnerabilities as they are about old Wi-Fi camera vulnerabilities.
New Wi-Fi Routers Can Handle All Your Devices
Your home most likely has more devices than it did when you bought the router.
The days when the average home had a laptop and maybe an early smartphone
connecting to the Wi-Fi have passed for most folks.
Now itâs not unusual for every person in a household to have multiple Wi-Fi
devices and then the home itself to have multiple devices (Wi-Fi smart
thermostats, smart speakers, smart plugs, smart home devices, and more) all
online all the time.
Not every device in the modern home is bandwidth hungry (though many of them
are), but they all need a consistent and stable connection. What good are smart
Wi-Fi security cameras or smart locks if they are constantly dropping off the
network?
New Wi-Fi Routers Offer Wall-to-Wall Coverage
The limited range of older Wi-Fi routers wasnât much of a problem when you
likely werenât using devices outside their range. If your router only had
enough reach to cover part of the first floor of your home, then most likely,
youâd just deal with it and use your laptop in the kitchen or living room
instead of upstairs in bed.
But now people have devices located all over their homes that need reliable
internet access (like smart TVs and smart speakers). And people want to use
their devices all over their home and even their yard. I canât speak for
everyone, but wall-to-wall (and even property-line-to-property-line) Wi-Fi
coverage is a must for me. If Iâm in my home or yard, I want to be connected
to my Wi-Fi.
Updating to a newer Wi-Fi router, especially a mesh system with multiple access
points, is the only way to make that happen if you have an older and
underpowered Wi-Fi router.
You Should Upgrade Your Wi-Fi Router Every 3-5 Years
Itâs one thing to highlight the benefits of upgrading your router, but how
often should you do it? Upgrading every year would be overkill and a hassle.
Upgrading when youâve had a router so long that it doesnât get security
updates and keeps dropping your newest devices off the network is waiting too
long.
We recommend that you upgrade your Wi-Fi router every 3-5 years. On the short
end, three years is long enough for incremental improvements to existing Wi-Fi
standards and hardware. If you have a home with demanding users and a lot of
devices, and you want the most current router hardware and software, then
updating every three years is a good plan.
On the longer end, five years is roughly the length of each Wi-Fi generation.
At the minimum, you should update your router every five years to ensure
youâre still getting both security and quality-of-life updates that patch
performance bugs and improve features.
After about five years, itâs to be expected that your router wonât be
receiving frequent updates (if it receives any at all). Both the hardware and
capabilities of the router will be lacking compared to newer equipment.
For the sake of argument, letâs look at a theoretical Wi-Fi router update
path over the last decades to highlight how even perfectly good routers get
long in the tooth and need to be replaced eventually.
Itâs 2005. You recently purchased a laptop with Wi-Fi, and youâd like to
play around with some early Wi-Fi products. You purchase the venerable Linksys
WRT54G router along with millions of other people around the world. Itâs a
great little 802.11b/g (Wi-Fi 3) router and can handle the modest demands of
your household.
Five years later, itâs 2010. You have more Wi-Fi devices in your home, and
the 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) was released in 2008. Wi-Fi 4 introduces a wide range of
improvements, including speed increases, increased range, and increased Wi-Fi
channel width. Wi-Fi 4 was also the first generation of Wi-Fi to support MIMO
(Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output) for more efficient connections. So you
upgrade to a Wi-Fi 4 router.
Five years later, itâs 2015. 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) has been out for a year and
includes supports faster and more numerous connections, improved MIMO,
including early support for Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO), and beamforming for
improved coverage. Those are all pretty great updates, and you upgrade your
Wi-Fi router.
Five years later, itâs 2020. At this point, Wi-Fi 5 is six years old, Wi-Fi 6
came out in 2019, and Wi-Fi 6E has been announced. Wi-Fi 6 is a significant
leap forward over Wi-Fi 5 and includes improvements to how Wi-Fi 5 devices are
handled on the Wi-Fi 6 network, along with improvements for native Wi-Fi 6
devices, and an emphasis on superior experience in high-density Wi-Fi
environments. It can easily be argued that Wi-Fi 6 is the first Wi-Fi
generation designed with the smart home and the âeveryone has a tablet,
phone, and laptopâ high-density home environment in mind. It also includes
the first major update to Wi-Fi encryption in 16 years: WPA3.
So at this point, in early 2023 when weâre writing this article, if youâre
using an old 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) or 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) router, youâre leaving
around a decade of Wi-Fi improvements on the table, and your home network and
overall Wi-Fi experience is likely suffering for it. Itâs the perfect time to
upgrade your router to a Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E model and enjoy a modern 2020-era
Wi-Fi experience.
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