Most people have probably heard about dual-band routers. A dual-band router simply provides two wireless bands: a 2.4 GHz band and a 5 GHz band, allowing for more devices and less interference. It’s like having two wireless routers in one. By dividing the clients you’re able to make sure things like your wireless printer, Wi-Fi Cameras and older generation devices aren’t interfering with more day-to-day devices like laptops, tablets and phones. Tri-Band Wi-Fi simply takes it one step further and provides three wireless bands to accommodate even more devices on a network. An AC3200 router, for instance, provides one 2GHz band, offering speeds up to 600Mbps, and two 5Ghz bands, for speeds up to 1300Mbps.
Tri-Band Wi-Fi and Speed
Now when you hear about Tri-Band routers like an AC3200, it should be clarified that a single device isn’t going to achieve a 3200 megabit link speed. The number, 3200, is an aggregated value from the three bands, 600+1300+1300, it’s not meant as the potential throughput of a single connected device. You may be thinking if it’s not necessarily made to give me faster Wi-Fi what’s the point of it? Well even though Tri-Band may not increase your devices speed (although upgrading your router to an AC3200 is bound to give you great coverage and connection) it will absolutely make a difference for those users with tons of devices on their network.
Tri-Band Wi-Fi and Congestion
Think of traffic on a freeway, where you’re crawling along at 10 mph, increasing the speed limit isn’t going to help anyone get anywhere sooner. If you were to add another lane, though, traffic would clear faster and, in the future, congestion would be less of a problem. Everyone’s speed would increase, potentially to the enforced limit of 65 mph.
When you have 10 to 15 devices connected to your network and you’re working with a dual-band, maybe even single band router (heaven help you) no matter how fast the router, it is just not built to handle a huge number of devices. A Tri-Band router not only provides top of the line AC speeds, but also handles as many devices as you can throw at it (please don’t actually throw devices at the router).
So all in all it’s just safe to say the more bands you have on a router the better. Whether your household just has a lot of connected devices or you just like to ensure your streaming and gaming is lag free, Tri-Band is the way to go.
This blog post was written by Zoe Revis
About Zoe Revis
Zoe is a Content Marketing Manager at D-Link and contributes to the Newegg Blog.
