The router you use at home may have become old and the place it now occupies in the room is a drawer in which it is slowly collecting dust. Perhaps it has crossed your mind to take it to a clean point for recycling and in this article and as an alternative we are going to give you some tips to take advantage of it.
As we have already seen with USB sticks with old stereos, an old router can have some uses that allow it to be given a second life. Utilities you can test at home and that they are an alternative to take advantage of old electronics and that they can avoid having to buy a new device.
Expand the number of connections
The usual thing is that any router on the market has different Ethernet ports on the back to connect devices online or locally. Typically, routers include between 2 and 4 Ethernet ports, but if this figure falls short, you can always choose to extend it using your old router.
It is enough to connect both routers by means of a fernet cable, so that the number of available ports is increased. If both devices have, for example, four sockets, now you will see how you have access to six.
Improve Wi-Fi network at home
Even if your current router is bigger, more powerful or more efficient… Wi-Fi may not reach all corners of the house and that is where your old router comes in, the one you have abandoned in a drawer.
Another use that you can give to your old device is none other than use it to improve Wi-Fi coverage at home. You will only need to connect the new router with the old router through an Ethernet cable and in this way turn the old one into a kind of Wi-Fi repeater. An option that will avoid you going through the box and getting a new device that may offer you the same result.
Create a guest network
Your new router may have the function that allows you to create a guest network, something that we have already seen in some models, both from operators and routers from different brands. But if among the options of your usual router you do not find this possibilityyou can always throw away your old device.
Again you have to make use of an Ethernet cable, a cable that you will surely have at home, since it is included with almost any router you buy. You simply have to join the router that you currently use with the old model and configure it in bridge mode.
In this way you can create a network of guests, which it will be the one that you will facilitate to the people who come home when you do not want to give them access to your network and Wi-Fi password. Of course, in this case, the ideal is that you give it a name and a password totally different from the one you currently use at home.
Use it to create a children’s network
Many of the modern routers on the market include parental control features, but yours may not have it. In this case, your old router can do the same functions with just a few minimal steps, we’ll see.
It is about creating a Wi-Fi network similar to the previous one, this is the guest one. A Wi-Fi network that will be accessed by the children and profiles you want to control and in which you can set the limitation of access to certain pages and web services.
Share files online
Connections from your old router can enter USB ports. We have already seen some uses that can be given to it. Your old router does not need to be connected to the Internet and simply it is enough to share, for example, a USB flash drive or a USB printer to use them online and share content.
These are some uses that you can give your router to give it a second youth and get it out of the drawer where it is collecting dust. And who knows if this way, you can save a few euros by not buying a device that offers you a similar result.
