A home network with the right connections Superfast connectivity: the Linksys AC 1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router That connected-home utopia - WiFi with more speed and fewer dropped connections; easy internet connectivity for streaming video or playing online games on your television; and readily accessible storage for all your videos, music, files and photos - gets closer this week with products from Linksys and Toshiba. Linksys AC 1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router Rating: 5/5 Personal Technology The laptop on which I am writing this is one of 21 devices currently online on my home network. I know this because of a web page in my browser that presents - in an easy, visual format - all the information picked up by the Linksys AC 1750 Smart Wi-Fi router ($220, £155 in the UK). My laptop, a PC, a game console, a couple of iPhones, an iPad, some network drives, a Sonos wireless music controller, a Nest thermostat, a DVR - to name but a few - are all identified and represented by appropriate icons. It brings home how many of my family's devices are internet-enabled. I also realise what may have been causing our flaky internet connections: the router and network it had established could not cope. That has not been the case so far with the AC 1750, which has provided solid, superfast connectivity in its first week of use. It is one of the first routers to use fifth-generation WiFi known as 802.11ac - and also supports previous generations such as 802.11n and 802.11g. 5G Wi-Fi can theoretically achieve speeds as good as 1.3 gigabits per second, but more important, the lower speeds to which it drops when near the edge of its range are still much higher than those of the current generation, thereby improving whole-home connectivity. The router's Smart WiFi webpage lets you tweak its performance easily. For example, I could drag and position devices such as an Apple TV, or applications such as the World of Warcraft game, to get priority access to bandwidth to stream internet video and games smoothly. Other widgets on my webpage dashboard allow me to do speed tests, impose parental controls, control a guest network and add third-party apps, such as one controlling a home-monitoring camera. The dashboard is accessible from anywhere, so I can troubleshoot my home network at work, reducing those calls from home that the internet is down again. Linksys AC 1300 Media Connector Rating: 5/5 The main problem with 5G routers is that no laptops, set-top boxes or other devices with 802.11ac chips are yet available to take full advantage of the blazing speeds on offer. Instead, Linksys offers the AC 1300 Media Connector ($160, £93), which makes gigabit connectivity that I usually associate with a wired connection available over WiFi. The ideal location for this box was by the TV, where devices such as game consoles and an Apple TV have Ethernet ports for wired connection but are too far from the router to be plugged in. Pushing "WiFi Protected Setup" buttons on the router and the AC 1300 established a wireless connection between them and I plugged my devices into the four Ethernet ports on the back of the media connector. I also plugged in a laptop and it achieved just as fast a connection as my PC, which is wired physically to the router. Toshiba Canvio Personal Cloud Rating 4/5 There are so many internet clouds offering to store data, it might be wise to choose a "personal cloud" such as this Canvio model to keep tabs on all your content. This 2-terabyte or 3Tb networked hard drive ($220/$250; international pricing to be announced) plugs into an Ethernet port on a router so all devices in the home can store photos, video, music and other files on it. They can then be accessed remotely through a web page or through forthcoming Android and iOS apps. The interface is simple and works nicely, allowing music as well as photo slide shows and video to be streamed. Chris Nuttall picks his favourite from the latest crop of apps What it is Paris 3D Saga for iPad Why you should try it Dassault Systèmes has spent two years creating a 3D rendering of Paris through the ages. This free iPad app lets you travel through time, explore famous buildings in their original settings and use finger swipes to erase the picture to expose the modern city underneath. There are numerous embedded explanatory videos from historians and a real-life 3D flyover of Paris that puts Apple's Maps to shame.