The importance of a robust home network has never been more clear.
As more and more people shift to working from home, more and more people are finding just how stark the difference is between home networks and business networks. Our job here at PAVE is to make sure our customers are kept up to date on the important changes and advances in technology, and right now is a perfect time to think about upgrading your home network.
No different than homes needing water, electricity, and other utilities, a home network has become a required modern utility service. With a professionally installed network, your family will be surfing, streaming, and working remotely over fast, reliable internet in no time. Let's look at just how important a home network is, and how it can help make your home life easier.
Traffic Cop
This scenario probably sounds familiar: You are trying to log into a meeting with the rest of the firm, only for the video to stutter and the audio to break up. Your kids are streaming Netflix on their iPads while your spouse is trying to stream a 4K movie on the big screen.
Think of it like traffic lanes. There's only so much "road" available for all your different devices -- the "cars" that are trying to drive down the road. But not all cars are the same size or can drive at the same speed. What you need is something that manages the flow of traffic and tells which cars to go in which lanes -- it helps prioritize whichever vehicles need the largest part of the road and helps everybody drive down the road without accidents or crashes.
That's exactly what a home network does. A properly set up network knows the difference between types of internet traffic and can help prioritize whatever needs the most bandwidth. If you want to make sure that all of your work video calls get higher priority than Netflix streaming or video games, you can easily set up your home network to do that.
This can help make both work -- and fun -- devices work better. With a home network and file sharing, you can easily and quickly move files, photos, music, and work documents between various computers as needed. No more using flash drives to manage different copies of files -- you can organize and manage everything digitally. Same goes for devices like printers -- with a network printer, you can print to it with any device wirelessly instead of having to run over and plug your laptop into the printer.
Powering Your Smart Home ... and Beyond
It's projected that by 2023, an average home will have 21 connected devices, and this number will only continue to grow. As more and more parts of your home are brought under the smart home umbrella and can connect to the internet, the importance of having a strong and successful "backbone" network for your home is only going to keep growing, as well.
On the video side of technology, the biggest bottleneck for 4K -- and eventually 8K streaming -- is the speed of home networks. As more and more shows are filmed and broadcast in 4K, it's going to become even more important to have a home network that can stand up and support that much bandwidth being streamed. The same goes for lossless audio, as well -- if you want the best sounding and highest quality audio from your streams, your home network needs to be able to support that. And it's easy to see how things can snowball once you sit and think about it. If one family member is streaming 4K in one room, your security system is broadcasting video feeds to our cell phone, and all of your smart locks, lights, and thermostat systems are connected to the internet and each other, the demands on your network are only going to keep going up and up.
Home networks also free your devices from needing to be plugged in. Forget having to sit down and plug your work laptop in at the same location every day; Instead you could take your laptop outside and sit in the sun while you finish those memos. It also clears up wires from running all over your house and makes for a neater and more aesthetically pleasing look for your computer and entertainment spaces.
Home networks are an important part of any modern home. No matter if you live alone, with a bunch of roommates, or have a big and growing family, being able to connect to the internet and use your devices easily and reliably is just as important as having access to other necessary utilities.
Whatever your home networking needs are, we're here for you to set up the best solution to empower your home. Send us a line over at our contact page or give us a call today at 615-279-8284 -- let's talk home networks and how we can make yours better!