Startups are often built on innovation and have tight budgets, in they have to manage multiple things. For startup owners and entrepreneurs, they have to assemble a winning team and bring their idea into reality on a tight budget, due to which they have to cut short on many things. However, one thing that is essential for a startup’s infrastructure is its WiFi router, and it shouldn’t be compromised.
Most startups opt for consumer-grade routers instead of business-class ones because they are affordable and readily available. But as soon as the startup starts to grow, its connectivity demands increase, and the limitations of a consumer-grade router become obvious.
Since a WiFi router directly impacts productivity, communication, and growth, having a business-class router that is manufactured specifically for high performance, security, and scalability becomes essential. Let us discuss various reasons why startups should consider business-class routers early on.
Reliable Connectivity with High Device Volume
Business routers often come with better hardware (CPU, RAM, and antenna system) and features to provide reliable connectivity, even with high device volume. This is something that you cannot expect from a home router because, as the number of devices starts to add up, along with cloud storage syncing, app usage, and video calls, a home router starts to crumble under pressure.
With business routers, you are inherently getting better hardware and better features like MU-MIMO ( Multi-User, Multiple Input Multiple Output) and beamforming that can maintain consistent performance across dozens of devices simultaneously, ensuring that all the devices on the network don’t face any type of connectivity or performance issue.
Advanced Security Features
Startups and businesses have to handle sensitive information, which could be prototypes, source codes, contracts, and user data. Unfortunately, they are also prime targets for cyberattacks. For this purpose, they need to be extra vigilant when it comes to cybersecurity because if they are using an insecure home router, then they might be putting everything in jeopardy.
Business-class routers come with advanced security features like built-in firewalls, VPN support, intrusion detection systems, automatic firmware updates, and separate VLANs. These advanced security features keep your data and devices on the network protected so that no security breach can occur. This can help startups avoid legal issues, breaches, and reputational damages.
Advanced Network Management
Home routers offer minimal configuration, which is something that is not preferred in a startup environment, because control and visibility are crucial in business settings. With business routers, you get the ability to manage your network and customize it the way you want to. You can prioritize bandwidth, block access to specific sites or services, set user-level or device-level bandwidth limits, and monitor real-time traffic.
All of this helps you have a better view of how the network is being used and where the resources are allocated, so that everything is crystal clear in front of you. Click here to learn more about the network management through the router admin page.
Highly Scalable
Compared to home routers, business routers are often scalable. As startups grow, their teams grow as well, and their bandwidth and connectivity requirements do as well. To accommodate more devices and bandwidth on a home router, you often need to replace the whole thing, whereas business routers are scalable and designed to grow with you.
Business routers come with key scalability features such as easy integration with mesh networks, support for additional access points or network extenders through http://192.168.0.1/, and software-defined upgrades for better functionality. The benefit of all of this is that it helps to expand the network without having to change the entire setup.
Uptime and Redundancy Features
Downtime is frustrating and potentially damaging to the reputation and revenue of startups because a minor internet outage or downtime can crash a live demo, product launch, or investor meeting. Business routers are designed to prevent such crashes, as they come with dual WAN ports (to allow internet connections from two different ISPs), failover capability (to automatically switch to a backup connection), and load balancing for optimal and continuous connectivity, if one ISP fails or faces any internet disruption.
