It is curious how the modem and wifi access points meet with little interest from many when they are the nerve center of our connections.
There is a virtual device inside our home, which is the beating heart of communications with the internet. Yet, it is often underestimated, so it becomes essential to know how to choose the next modem. Unlike what many believe, modems do not. They are all the same, and the model you choose can make a difference in the quality of the connections.
New products with the WIFI 7 standard are arriving on the market, so the first point in choosing your next modem is to look for a device that is at least WIFI 6.
The Operator’s Modem Is No Longer A Requirement
Many users don’t care about the modem they have at home because they rely on the equipment supplied by the chosen operator: the problem is that very often, the operators themselves, for reasons of sheer economic convenience, choose devices of dubious quality, with low power computing power and with reduced wifi transmission efficiency.
For this reason, the modem becomes a real bottleneck:
- Managing multiple video calls simultaneously.
- Playing online.
- Using streaming platforms on multiple TVs simultaneously within the same house can be very complicated.
Fortunately, using the operator’s modem is no longer mandatory; on the contrary, a few years ago, a law obliged all network operators to provide the necessary parameters for connection with devices owned by the user without any limitation.
The Free Modem Can Also Use FTTH Fiber.
Except for Iliad, which supplies a modem with an integrated digital terminal, almost all the network operators that manage the fiber to the home, defined as FTTH, Fiber To The Home, supply a small external device called ONT Optical Network Terminal. This small device is compatible with any modem. Indeed, it also allows you to use simple access points.
Here we have to face another crossroads, the difference between modem and access point: for ADSL and VDSL connections, Internet services that use copper to get inside the house, you need a modem, while for pure fiber, the one we have already mentioned, and it’s called FTTH, an access point can suffice, a device that distributes the wifi signal and manages the internal network.
A modem can be used as a simple wifi access point, while devices classified as access points cannot perform the network’s interconnection function. Therefore they need to be for DSL services and connections that do not use fiber optics.
