Best Routers for Fortnite

Fortnite Battle Royale is a very competitive game online and so this guide is all about the best routers for Fortnite that can give you an edge when you drop from the battle bus and get into the action. Routers have come along way since the early internet days and have plenty of unique features that can help you in online play. If you're looking to improve your connecting in Fortnite, upgrading your Router is something you should consider.

Fortnite Best Routers

Routers for Fortnite

Best Routers For Fortnite
How does a Router effect gameplay in Fortnite

Fortnite is one of the most popular games in the world and everyone is trying to get an edge over their opponents. Of course, playing the game and practising your skill is the best way to improve, but there are also other minor configurations you should take into consideration. This post is all about Routers and how they can help improve your experience when playing Fortnite online.

Fortnite Battle Royale is free to play. It can be played on most systems, including PS4 and Xbox. The game allows 100 players to jump into an arena filled with different weapons and items to help you eliminate each other. The last player standing wins, with the arena's area of play slowly shrinking as time goes on, forcing combat between players. One of Fortnite's most unique gameplay features is it's building component; players can build structures in game to help protect them from incoming fire, help them get the high-ground to jump on opponents or simple just hide out in the game until you're ready to battle.

Fortnite makes most of it's money through V-Cash, an in-game currency that you can buy to earn skins, emotes, dances and lots of other cosmetic-only addons. The game is not pay-to-win and each season there is a Battle Pass that players can pay around $10.00 to earn rare exclusive season-only items. If you want to save money on Fortnite, check out our Fortnite Sale page for updates on when you can get Fortnite at a discount.

Check out best laptops for Fortnite if you're looking to get a machine that will play Fortnite lag free.

Check out our full review of the Netgear Nighthawk XR700 Gaming Router for a comprehensive look at one of the best Routers available for gamers.

How does a Router effect gameplay in Fortnite?

A router is a piece of hardware that you have to help connect you to the internet. This piece of hardware gives you WiFi in your house, setups your wired connections and generally manages all your incoming and outgoing traffic. Usually when you sign-up for Internet access, you are given a standard router by your Internet company which comes with basic features to get you online. Oftentimes, these routers can have limited Wifi range, which can cause lag, buffering and other nuisances when using the internet. As such, many people have turned to upgrading their routers to more powerful pieces of hardware, which have better features, better Wifi ranges and can help make sure your connection is not interfered with by others who are using the internet.

In Fortnite, when you connect to a lobby to begin a match, Fortnite's algorithm attempts to connect you to players who are close to you. This means that players will have the most optimal experience when playing, creating a low ping-rate which means players don't have lag spikes when the action get's going. Ping is a way of measuring how quickly you are recieving updates from the server and other players. If you're in Europe and connect to players who live in America, there will be a noticable difference in game-play due to how long it takes for data to be sent between everyone in game. This can cause situations when you're in a one-v-one and all of a sudden their shotgun blast hits you before you can even react. That is due to their ping being lower and sending data to the server first.

So what can a Router do to help get you lower ping? Introducing Geo-Filtering.

Geo Filter

The Geo-Filter helps reduce lag in game by setting a maximum distance of the servers and players you connect to. So instead of reling on Fortnite to connect you to players in Europe, you can make specific rules to make it so you connect to players only in the U.K. This means you will get a lot lower ping-rate in games and a more consistant playing style. For gameplay features like sniping and shotgun, which are very important in terms of having low ping, this can make a world of difference. Not all routers have Geo Filter installed, so you'll want to check our list of Routers below to see if this feature is included.

One downside of Geo-Filtering is that it may mean having to wait longer for lobbies to become available. If you're in a remote country which doesn't have many players, you'll have to wait longer during matches to get a full 100 players. Luckily, Fortnite is very popular all across the world at the moment, so this shouldn't affect you too much.

Router Speeds

A router will have different maximum speeds it can reach depending on it's hardware. Most standard routers are enough for online-gameplay, but if you want a Router that can handle super-fast broadband, you may want to invest in a better Router. Routers can provide two different bandwidths for you to connect on: the 2.4GHz band or the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band has a better wifi range but slower speeds, whereas the 5GHz band has much faster speeds but a more limited range. You can usually choose which band you want to use when setting up your router too.

Speed wise, the 802.11ac protocol is the most up-to-date standard for routers and allows them to achieve the most fastest speeds. This standard is backwards compatible with older devices, so even if your device doesn't support the 802.11ac protocol, it will be able to connect to devices which use a lower version, like 802.11n.

The maximum speed for 802.11ac routers is around 1.3 gigabits per second and the maximum speed for 802.11n routers is around 450 megabits per second. That doesn't quite mean 802.11ac is 3x faster than 802.11n becuase these speeds are theoreticle and achieved under "lab conditions". Still, the 802.11ac is the faster of the two, but by how much, varies greatly on how your wifi is setup, the walls in your house and so on.

Quality Of Service

Quality of Service (QOS) is a feature some Routers have that allow you to make sure your connection to a device is prioritized over other household devices. If you have younger siblings or other family members streaming huge amounts of data, you're going to see a decrease in performance, especially if your internet speeds are quite slow to being with. With QOS, you can select which device should be prioritized and that one will make sure it has most of the bandwidth available.

Antennas and CPU

The hardware of a Router can be equally important in terms of performance. The Antennas that come with Routers help broadcast the wifi signals around the house; having high-performance antennas can great help reduce wifi interference and increase the range in which you can connect to devices. The CPU in a Router is used to process all the data that your Router recieves- if you have multiple people on the internet, that's a lot more data for the Router to process, so having a good CPU will help process this faster and in turn, give you better performance overall.

The Best Routers for Fortnite

If you're looking to upgrade your Router to improve your Fortnite Battle Royale gameplay, take a look at these Routers we have found below. They all come with different features, ranges and performance improvements that can help minimize your internet performance problems.

Router	Max Speed	Geo Filter	Protocols	QoS	Price	Purchase
NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR300 WiFi Router	1.75 Gbps	yes	802.11ac	yes	$199.99	Buy On Amazon
NETGEAR AC1200 Dual Band Smart WiFi Router	1.2Gbps	no	802.11ac	yes	$59.99	Buy On Amazon
NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR700 WiFi Router	7.2Gbps	yes	802.11ac	yes	$449.89	Buy On Amazon
GRYPHON - Advance Security & Parental Control Smart Mesh WiFi System	3Gbps	no	802.11bgn	yes	$389.00	Buy On Amazon
TP-Link AC1750 Smart WiFi Router	1.3Gbps	no	802.11.ac	yes	$52.49	Buy On Amazon
NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500 WiFi Router	2.6Gbps	yes	802.11ac	yes	$265.30	Buy On Amazon