The modern office can't function without Internet in most cases, be it a small or home office (SOHO) or a big corporation. What they all have in common beyond needing the fastest Internet they can get is a box that splits that connection up for use by multiple employees—a box that must also double as the controller of all the network traffic. It's the router, a crucial piece of hardware that's often ignored—as long as it's working properly.
In this section of the PCMag Business Choice Awards 2014, it's time for us to give awards to the companies that provide business routers to companies big and small.
We rate a lot of routers in hands-on reviews here in PCMag Labs, typically of the SOHO and consumer type; this survey asked people about them and the higher-end devices used in corporate settings. As such, our results show a mix of ratings for vendors that serve many different types of customers.
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That's because this year, we asked PCMag readers extra questions about the routers they administer at work, whether that work is in their garage, a strip mall office, or a high-rise in the big city. The results give us a special look at just how the manufacturers are perceived by people on the job, rather than just for personal use. The results are very different from what we found in the Readers' Choice router results...but also very similar.
Routers
In our Readers' Choice stories, it's pretty typical to find Apple at the top of most ratings—fans of the company are almost religious in their fervor about the products it makes, and the Airport router line is no exception. But you don't typically think of Apple as a provider of business-based Internet base stations (as Apple prefers to call them). In fact, last year, Apple didn't get enough responses in our Business Choice questions to get a router rating.
That changes this year: Apple made the cut with plenty of responses, and rocketed right to the top with an overall score of 9.0 out of 10, the absolute highest of any router vendor rated for business use. Apple's reliability score of 9.4 is also the highest rating of any on our chart, plus Apple is on top when it comes to likelihood to recommend (8.9) and value (8.5).
¦ Red—Business Choice Winner.
It's clear that Apple's router usage is limited to smaller offices (the median office size rated was under 50 users). When it comes to the big guns for a major building, the obvious choice is Cisco, a company whose name is all but synonymous with corporate networks. In 2013, Cisco was our only Readers' Choice Award winner for business routers with its overall score of 8.6. Considering it scored the same number last year, plus had improvements in its score for value and likelihood to recommend since then, it becomes clear Cisco deserves the award again. (Cisco did have a dip in its Reliability and Repairs numbers, however.)
There's one other surprise vendor that makes the grade with an equally satisfying overall score: Asus. Again, it primarily makes routers that would be classified for homes, but the SOHO market loves what the company provides. Asus equaled Cisco's 8.6 overall score and 8.4 likelihood to recommend; it even equaled Apple when it came to the Value score of 8.5.
Sadly, the rest of the companies rated behind these winners (Netgear didn't fair badly with an 8.4 overall) or well behind. Linksys, once a powerhouse for home networking, now owned by Belkin, couldn't scratch high enough. The less said about the showings by D-Link, Motorola, and Actiontec, the better.
Business Choice Winners: ROUTERS
Apple
Apple fanatics extend their love to the router they use for work, with high scores across the board for the Airport base station line. It's pretty much the perfect SOHO router, according to PCMag readers.
Cisco
There's no doubt: if you've got a big office and want a router that can handle all the Internet and network traffic, you should go Cisco. It's the highest rated among vendors that focus on large businesses with more than 50 employees.
Asus
Don't be surprised to see Asus pop up as a top-rated router maker. The company has been making great strides with its networking products, and consumers are using them more and more for SOHO setups that are equally appreciated.
Methodology
For the 2014 Business Choice series, we emailed survey invitations to PCMag.com community members, specifically subscribers to our Readers' Choice Survey mailing list. This survey was hosted by Equation Research, which also performs our data collection. This survey was in the field from March 10, 2014 through March 26, 2014.
Respondents were asked to rate their business router. They were asked multiple questions about their overall satisfaction as well as experiences with technical support within the past 12 months.
Because the goal of the survey is to understand how the routers compare to one another and not how one respondent's experience compares to another's, we use the average of the router manufacturer's rating, not the average of every respondent's rating. In all cases, the overall ratings are not based on averages of other scores in the table; they are based on answers to the question, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your router?"
Scores not represented as a percentage are on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is the best.
Net Promoter Scores are based on the concept introduced by Fred Reichheld in his 2006 best seller, The Ultimate Question, that no other question can better define the loyalty of a company's customers than "how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" This measure of brand loyalty is calculated by taking the percent of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters) and subtracting the percent who answered 0 through 6 (detractors).
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Thanks to Ben Gottesman for his contributions to this story.