Don’t Throw Away Your Old Router — Do This Instead

Unlike many units in your house, you in all probability do not assume a lot about upgrading your router. Routers can work for a very long time, and it is easy to miss when one is not getting firmware updates anymore or does not support the latest Wi-Fi standards. This could make upgrading to a brand new Wi-Fi router harder, since throwing away a superbly functioning piece of apparatus feels wasteful.

Thankfully, this does not must be a problem. Old routers can simply be repurposed to have use at the same time as a secondary or tertiary gadget. While newer fashions provide higher safety, vary, and efficiency and are thus one of the best on your major gadget, previous routers can reap the benefits of the truth that most networking fundamentals have not modified in a long time. You have some ways to repurpose an previous router as an alternative of sending it off to the landfill or for recycling.

If your new Wi-Fi router struggles to achieve corners of your own home, think about using your previous router as a devoted entry level. With this technique, you needn’t buy a wireless extender or one other single-purpose piece of tech.

There are two approaches you possibly can take: wired or wi-fi. A wired connection brings secure connectivity and quick speeds, however you need an Ethernet line running again to your major router. This may not be attainable a number of rooms away except you are snug pulling cable via your partitions. 

I like to recommend in opposition to broadcasting two Wi-Fi alerts in shut proximity, since this will result in wi-fi interference and worse efficiency. The excellent news is that you may disable particular frequencies on each routers to keep away from congestion. A great possibility is configuring the previous router to broadcast on the two.4GHz band, whereas disabling that frequency on the newer router. This is as a result of 2.4GHz alerts penetrate partitions higher, whereas a lot of the Wi-Fi enhancements over the previous decade have utilized to higher frequencies like 5GHz and 6GHz.

Many routers help wi-fi repeater or bridge performance, so examine the admin panel or guide for these phrases. On my older TP-Link router, this characteristic is hidden inside a number of sub-menus beneath the WDS bridging label. The draw back with this method is that your router has to make use of a part of its restricted wi-fi capability to speak along with your router. This interprets to slower real-world speeds whenever you’re related to the secondary router.

A small variety of routers also can double up as a mesh Wi-Fi node. Asus calls this characteristic AiMesh on its routers, and it permits you to combine totally different fashions to create one unified community. If you have not chosen a brand new router but and your previous one provides this, purchase one in the identical household to reap the benefits of it.

If your new router does not have sufficient LAN ports to attach high-bandwidth units like good TVs, computer systems and gaming consoles, you should utilize your old router as a switch. A fundamental community change sometimes prices between $10 and $20, and is one more single-use gadget you needn’t purchase in case you have an previous router mendacity round.

Setting up a router in change mode is comparatively simple. Simply run an Ethernet cable out of your new router to the previous one, utilizing LAN ports on every, and join your units to the remaining ports on the previous router. Make certain you do not plug something into the previous router’s WAN port.

Many routers provide Access Point (AP) or Switch modes of their administrative settings, which you may need to allow by accessing the router’s admin panel. If you do not see certainly one of these modes, you may need to disable the router’s DHCP server, together with another routing choices like firewall and NAT, manually.

The similar warning about wi-fi interference applies right here as effectively. You ought to disable all wi-fi performance on the previous router in the event you solely care in regards to the onboard Ethernet ports.

Many routers have a USB port that is simple to miss. But you should utilize this in some ways, together with to attach a storage gadget or printer. The latter permits you to provoke print jobs from any gadget related to your router, even wirelessly. If you might have an previous printer that lacks Wi-Fi help, this may be a straightforward workaround.

Connecting a storage gadget like an exterior laborious drive or thumb drive can flip your router right into a rudimentary storage server. In different phrases, you possibly can learn and write to the storage gadget from any gadget on the community. Dedicated network-attached storage (NAS) machines and the drives for them value a good bit, so that is a reasonable approach to get began. Just understand that routers do not embrace any reliability or backup options, which is the place precise NAS units shine. And the USB port in your router is probably going not the quickest, so efficiency can be restricted. 

After connecting the gadget, poke round in your router’s admin panel to examine its USB gadget sharing settings for one of the best expertise.

Many trendy routers help VPN performance, however enabling this characteristic means routing all visitors via the tunnel. You can set up your VPN app on particular person units as an alternative, however that may result in battery drain over lengthy durations. This is the place repurposing an previous router right into a VPN consumer makes a number of sense. Using a devoted router for the VPN that operates independently out of your major community means you possibly can hook up with it whenever you need, with out operating all visitors via it or forcing your cellular units to deal with the workload.

The precise directions differ by VPN supplier and router producer, however you may usually begin by connecting your previous router to the brand new one and enabling entry level mode. Then, search for VPN settings within the router’s administration panel, activate the characteristic, and supply your VPN credentials.

While we do not all the time take into consideration them on this manner, routers are primarily low-power computer systems, sometimes pairing an environment friendly CPU with small quantities of RAM and reminiscence. They accordingly ship with light-weight working methods designed for his or her supposed objective: routing community visitors and the whole lot else related to that activity. This creates issues when producers cease offering the most recent firmware on your router, or when its restricted nature prevents you from doing what you need.

Luckily for us, whole enterprising open-source communities have constructed customized firmware designed particularly for routers. Projects like OpenWRT change a router’s manufacturer-provided software program with a extra versatile OS that provides you larger management over the gadget, together with the flexibility to put in third-party apps like torrent shoppers. 

These are an awesome choice to hold your previous router going for longer. Many of the recommendations above are additionally simpler to arrange on customized router firmware like DD-WRT or FreshTomato. I take advantage of OpenWRT, as I discover it much less restrictive than many routers’ default working methods.

The draw back to customized firmware is that not all routers are supported. Given the sheer variety of fashions, you may need to learn via every undertaking’s documentation to slim down compatibility on your particular gadget.