I Hate That I Bought My WiFi Router Just Before WiFi 6 Was Common
When I first moved into my house I used Virgin Media's supplied home hub for a while. It never really seemed to cause me any problem initially and as it was just me alone I didn't see much benefit to replacing it, even though initially I planned to get some hit-shit mega router.
Going into the pandemic me and my partner needed to work from home almost exclusively for a while and it became apparent that Internet drops were happening occasionally. With browsing and streaming this wasn't really obvious but as soon as we started video calls the issue was thrust into the limelight. Virgin Media being shitheads were no use at all in diagnosing the issue so I thought a natural troubleshooting step was to throw their crappy Hub into the cupboard and upgrade to a more respectable router.
Having used Asus routers back at the parent's house, Asus was the brand of choice and it has proven to be a good one with rock solid stability, simple interface and as many settings as I could ever need. I've never really paid much attention to WiFi standards until quite recently and I'm starting to wish that I had more in the past - this router is WiFi 5.
I was hoping to run this router until it failed really, but with me now using AirPlay on HomePods I am possibly butting up against some limitations of the WiFi 5 technology, though I'm not fully convinced that an upgrade would solve all my issues - I think it may be a cop-out that WiFi 6 or above is required here. HomePods were released in 2018 before WiFi 6 was even on the market.
If I had bought my router a couple of months later - or spent more money instead - I could probably be basking in the glory of WiFi 6 right now, but alas, Virgin Media had to be shit.
I'm now wondering if I upgrade to WiFi 7 when prices fall a little just to stay up to date, as knowing my luck, my current unit will fail just before WiFi 8 is released and then I will be in the same situation again. Curse the relentless marching forwards of time.