Indeed, an Internet router is one of the items on ForRent.com’s First Apartment Checklist. However, the decision whether to buy or rent one from your ISP is often challenging. Have you ever experienced something like this situation? This is an experience I’ve had many times before. There was an important document I needed to print off and fill out, but for some reason, my wireless printer was unable to connect to the network. With a sigh of frustration, I went through the same song-and-dance I’d engaged in multiple times before — I reset my router, reset the settings on the printer, and re-connected it.
Then, a week later, it happened again.
In order to make things easier on their users, a lot of ISPs have started providing combination router/modems to their subscribers. For the average user (and the ISP itself), this is a whole lot simpler. There’s less for the end user to configure, and the ISP spends less time on setup.
On the other hand, simplicity isn’t always the best route. These combination units usually come with a lovely “rental fee” attached — usually a few dollars a month, sometimes more. On the surface, that might seem pretty reasonable, but those fees tend to add up pretty fast.
“Paying your service provider for a modem, especially one that doubles as a wireless router, seems convenient,” writes Yahoo! Technology Reporter Daniel Howley. “But assuming a [$10] a month rental fee based on Comcast’s fee (which is one of the highest) you’ll end up forking out over $120 a year for something you can buy for yourself for much less, and that you may get good use out of for several years. Keep that leased modem for four years, and you’ve paid $384 … and that’s if your provider doesn’t increase its rental fees.”
Money’s far from the only reason you might want to ditch your ISP’s device in favor of your own. There’s also the fact that, as a general rule, ISP-provided routers tend to be both outdated and relatively low-quality. The story I told at the beginning of the piece is one that actually happened with a combination router/modem that was provided to me by my ISP at the time — and curiously, all the problems I was having with WiFi vanished the instant I purchased a router of my own.
[tweetthis]Should you purchase your own #router or rely on your #ISP? What’s the trade off? Check it out.[/tweetthis]
“The main advantage to bringing your own router is getting additional hardware and features that your ISP’s router doesn’t provide,” reads a piece on How To Geek. “For example, let’s say you really want the fastest 802.11ac Wi-Fi and your combined router/modem doesn’t provide it to you. You can purchase your own wireless router with the feature and connect it to your modem via Ethernet. It will then provide fast Wi-Fi access and communicate over the wired Ethernet line with your modem.”
Now, it is worth mentioning here that depending on how long you plan on sticking with your current ISP, it might indeed be more economical to simply stick with their router. It’s something How To Geek refers to as the break-even point, the point in time at which it costs more to stay with your ISP than to purchase your own. In the case of Comcast, for example, the break-even point would be a year.
At the end of the day, whether or not you purchase your own router is entirely up to you — though I’d highly advise you to do so. Sure, you might be trading off a bit of simplicity, but in the long run, you’ll save money and have a better network for all your devices.
If you ask me, that’s a fair trade.