Why you should not connect any device to the network
You can connect computers, mobile phones, tablets, electronic books, household appliances of all kinds to your router… There are a large number of options, but you must bear in mind that each device is different, has different characteristics and can also be more or less secure in function of several factors.
Mainly you can have problems if you connect low quality IoT devices to your wireless network. Why do we say this? You may be connecting a device that has some vulnerability and that happens when you buy any device on the Internet and it can be a counterfeit or a low quality model.
This can cause an attacker to exploit that device and gain access to the local network. In this way, you could put the entire network and all the computers connected to it at risk. A major problem that puts privacy and security at riskSo it should be prevented from happening.
Therefore, as you can see, connecting any device to your Wi-Fi network can have negative consequences. It is always convenient to have all equipment updated, protected and avoid those that may be obsolete. In this way you will prevent them from being targeted by hackers.
It can also affect performance
But beyond being dangerous, very old devices could also affect the performance of your network. This occurs in those that use the 802.11b protocol and are not compatible with the newer ones. It is a protocol that appeared in the early 2000s and offers a transfer rate of just 11 Mbps.
What is happening? The problem is because the different protocols use different modulation techniques to transmit data. If there is an old device connected to the router, the router will adapt to that protocol so that it can work. That means the others are going to have trouble reaching top speed.
Therefore, if, for example, you use a very old PDA and connect it to your local network, not only could this be a security problem, but it could also affect the performance of the router and the entire connection. Also, keep in mind that these older devices are not compatible with current encryptions and you will have to use an outdated Wi-Fi key encryption, which can also be a problem.
In short, as you can see, it is not always a good idea to connect any device to your Wi-Fi router. It is important that you take into account certain limitations and some problems that may appear like the ones we have explained in this article.
