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Wireless N and gigabit for your house, routers/impressions/advice thread.
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Gary Whitta
Member
Yay this is a handy thread, I'm finally upgrading from my current b/g Netgear router to a Time Capsule as my new place makes it difficult to run a wired connection to all my devices. Also picked up the new wireless-n dongle for Xbox 360. My hope is it'll be good enough to stream HD video from Netflix. I've been a little spoiled in having wired connections for everything so I'm hoping going from wired to wireless-n won't feel like too much of a step down. Anyone have any experience with this?
Devil Theory
Member
I need to upgrade as well, glad this thread was started. I was extremely excited about the NetGear WNDR3700, until I seen this Review on Amazon. Now I'm back to thinking about the Airport Extreme, but as said before, 3 ports. Kills.
Edit:
I have a 360, PS3, Wireless Netflix box, Wii, MacBook Pro and a desktop PC going through a wall; I'm currently using a 4 year old Belkin Router; I need an update bad. Sometimes it slows down to a crawl; took me 8minutes to download a 5mb file on my PS3, despite having the fastest my ISP provides (5-10mb/s); and my Wireless drops constantly on my laptop. Not to mention I can't connect to my friends on Xbox Live because of NAT settings.
Somebody recommend me the best possible; price is no issue.
Edit:
I have a 360, PS3, Wireless Netflix box, Wii, MacBook Pro and a desktop PC going through a wall; I'm currently using a 4 year old Belkin Router; I need an update bad. Sometimes it slows down to a crawl; took me 8minutes to download a 5mb file on my PS3, despite having the fastest my ISP provides (5-10mb/s); and my Wireless drops constantly on my laptop. Not to mention I can't connect to my friends on Xbox Live because of NAT settings.
Somebody recommend me the best possible; price is no issue.
Pristine_Condition
Member
Wow. Thanks for making this thread, guys.
I'm about to start a major project (at least for me) and really need some advice/input from folks here.
My parents just retired and moved to their new home, out near Austin, in the woods. It's actually two small houses. One will be the main house, the other a little guest house with an office/computer room/hobby room.
They currently have their broadband running to the guest house only, so I want to run a wired connection between the two houses, and also feed wired connections to two rooms in the guest house and three or four connections in the main house. I also want to have wifi going eventually on the property as well.
The wiring part is no problem. I'm very adept at wiring, and have already installed the cable for their dish HDTV in both houses, and will be wallmounting the TVs soon, and it's working perfectly and looks great. I've also scored enough UV resistant Cat6 to make the fairly short run (about 25') from house to house, plus enough additional cable to wire all the rooms from a buddy, plus all the wiring hardware/plates ect.. I can do the wiring no problem, but I'm a total noob at the actual networking part.
So here's my situation:
The router in the guest house from the ISP is a 2Wire 2701HG with 4 LAN ports. I also have an almost brand-new Linksys Wireless G router with four more LAN ports. My hope is to get the job done at least for now with this equipment without having to add any other hardware if possible. At a later time I'd like to upgrade the routers to gigabit ethernet/N routers, but I'd prefer to get them going with the equipment we have on hand now. I'm hoping this can be done.
What I was thinking/hoping was that I could take use one of the four LAN ports in the 2Wire router to make the cable run over to the other house, feed that connection into the Linksys router in the main house, and have that router feed the three or four connections in that house.
Am I on the right track with my thinking? Can this be done? Any tips? How do I set up the second router?
I'm about to start a major project (at least for me) and really need some advice/input from folks here.
My parents just retired and moved to their new home, out near Austin, in the woods. It's actually two small houses. One will be the main house, the other a little guest house with an office/computer room/hobby room.
They currently have their broadband running to the guest house only, so I want to run a wired connection between the two houses, and also feed wired connections to two rooms in the guest house and three or four connections in the main house. I also want to have wifi going eventually on the property as well.
The wiring part is no problem. I'm very adept at wiring, and have already installed the cable for their dish HDTV in both houses, and will be wallmounting the TVs soon, and it's working perfectly and looks great. I've also scored enough UV resistant Cat6 to make the fairly short run (about 25') from house to house, plus enough additional cable to wire all the rooms from a buddy, plus all the wiring hardware/plates ect.. I can do the wiring no problem, but I'm a total noob at the actual networking part.
So here's my situation:
The router in the guest house from the ISP is a 2Wire 2701HG with 4 LAN ports. I also have an almost brand-new Linksys Wireless G router with four more LAN ports. My hope is to get the job done at least for now with this equipment without having to add any other hardware if possible. At a later time I'd like to upgrade the routers to gigabit ethernet/N routers, but I'd prefer to get them going with the equipment we have on hand now. I'm hoping this can be done.
What I was thinking/hoping was that I could take use one of the four LAN ports in the 2Wire router to make the cable run over to the other house, feed that connection into the Linksys router in the main house, and have that router feed the three or four connections in that house.
Am I on the right track with my thinking? Can this be done? Any tips? How do I set up the second router?
SuicideUZI
Member
I would just like a gbit router that i can actually get anywhere close to 1gbit transferring files on my own internal network.
I have the 1gbit D-Link DGL-4300 "gaming router" and I have everything except for my laptop wired with CAT6 cable, but still the most I seem to ever be able to get when transferring files from one wired computer to another wired computer is around 88mbit.
I have a switch in the mix as well but its a 1gbit switch so I dunno why i cant even get 100mbit much less anywhere close to 1gbit.
I would like to upgrade to a wireless N router as well tho just because the speeds when transferring files to my laptop is significantly slower than the 88mbit I get on the wired computers
I have the 1gbit D-Link DGL-4300 "gaming router" and I have everything except for my laptop wired with CAT6 cable, but still the most I seem to ever be able to get when transferring files from one wired computer to another wired computer is around 88mbit.
I have a switch in the mix as well but its a 1gbit switch so I dunno why i cant even get 100mbit much less anywhere close to 1gbit.
I would like to upgrade to a wireless N router as well tho just because the speeds when transferring files to my laptop is significantly slower than the 88mbit I get on the wired computers
Devil Theory
Member
I'm looking at the DIR-655, and I might pick it up, but I have one question: compared to the Extreme N Gaming Router (DGL-4500); what's the technical difference? I have issues with my NAT, should I go for the 4500?
SuicideUZI
Member
Devil Theory said:
I'm not sure what the technical differences are but I was looking at the 4500 at one point as well, but it seems to have a lot of bad reviews on newegg which dissuaded me from getting it
You lied to me, GAF. Despite my horrible previous experiences with D-link, I went and got a DIR-655 last weekend because it was apparently the best router ever. I've already had to reboot the thing 3 times because the Wi-Fi just craps out and won't take any connection (or lets devices connect to it but doesn't relay the internet connection. Duh) until it's power cycled. Like every single D-Link router I've ever had.
So uh, best non-D-Link router, anyone?
So uh, best non-D-Link router, anyone?
RevoDS said:
Try Billion.
I worked at an internet company doing tech support, and this is the one that was recommended by the crew...
and after my Belkin crapped out after giving me endless grief for years on end (which I thought was 'normal'), I swapped over to the Billion... solid gold.
devildog820
Member
RevoDS said:
I still say the Airport Extreme. The antenna design is amazing. I took one with me for aid work in Haiti and despite having about 6 access points in the area (plus WiMax at 5ghz stomping on everything) it never dropped a connection or suffered from interference that I noticed.
My ancient Linksys G access point started to act flaky and my DIR-655 hasn't really been working as good as I had hoped so I decided to drop $160 on Amazon for a Netgear WNDR3700. This router by far was the easiest to setup among the other vendors I have tried in the past. I have Charter High Speed so there's no login information, all I did was plug in my cable modem, access the routers config page, and it automatically checked for updated firmware. Very nice. So now I have both my B and G networks on one device. The routers firmware itself is pretty good save for a few settings in some obscure places. There's a built-in bandwidth counter, the option to have both WPA 1 and 2 enabled for compatibility, and a special "Video Mode" for the N side of the house. I think I'm finally happy with this router after trying two other brands and had them either die or not perform as well as it should.
I got this cheap rosewill from newegg a couple weeks ago for 20 bucks. Didn't get a free fax modem though, darn! I haven't had any problems with it except with wireless n on my psp wouldn't connect so I had to create a new access point for it that was g+b only. People in reviews are saying it's hard to setup but I'm guessing they're retarded because it was really easy. I don't actually have anything that uses wireless n though.
Devil Theory said:
Nononononononononono
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Do NOT get the 4500.
It is FUCKED.
It has severe hardware issues that dlink is trying to gloss over with shitty, shitty firmware patches. In a few months they'll simply stop pretending to fix it and claim that the latest firmware solves the problems. They are liars and the 4500 is pure shit.
Question to Airport Extreme owners:
How is it with walls and a second floor? (Thin-ish plasterboard and 1 flight of stairs)
I just switched to 50Mb cable broadband with Virgin Media and the little Wireless draft N box they give me doesn't seem to be too good, I loose about 40% of my download speed from being upstairs, I tried DD-WRT but that only made it worse and now I have 60% loss.
Current router is Dlink DIR-615.
One more question since this is the first time I have had cable, the other box Virgin Media gave me is the modem, right? Where the coax cable goes to and then out ethernet to the wireless router? So I would have to keep that and just plug the Airport Extreme into it if I get it?
Ta for any help GAF!
How is it with walls and a second floor? (Thin-ish plasterboard and 1 flight of stairs)
I just switched to 50Mb cable broadband with Virgin Media and the little Wireless draft N box they give me doesn't seem to be too good, I loose about 40% of my download speed from being upstairs, I tried DD-WRT but that only made it worse and now I have 60% loss.
Current router is Dlink DIR-615.
One more question since this is the first time I have had cable, the other box Virgin Media gave me is the modem, right? Where the coax cable goes to and then out ethernet to the wireless router? So I would have to keep that and just plug the Airport Extreme into it if I get it?
Ta for any help GAF!
FrancisH said:Question to Airport Extreme owners:
How is it with walls and a second floor? (Thin-ish plasterboard and 1 flight of stairs)
I just switched to 50Mb cable broadband with Virgin Media and the little Wireless draft N box they give me doesn't seem to be too good, I loose about 40% of my download speed from being upstairs, I tried DD-WRT but that only made it worse and now I have 60% loss.
Current router is Dlink DIR-615.
One more question since this is the first time I have had cable, the other box Virgin Media gave me is the modem, right? Where the coax cable goes to and then out ethernet to the wireless router? So I would have to keep that and just plug the Airport Extreme into it if I get it?
Ta for any help GAF!
This is just my experience, but I get 70-80mbps to my laptop upstairs with the airport extreme downstairs (on file transfers between computers, my internet is only 15mbps). I had it in a different spot downstairs a while ago, and while it was physically closer than it is now, I was only getting 40-50mbps, so placement is really important.
I've never had a single problem with my airport extreme and definitely recommend it, especially if you have macs.
The answer to your last question is yes, just plug the ethernet from the modem into whatever new router you get.
Crazymoogle
Member
gcubed said:
I hear it's pretty good, but only 3 LAN ports on it for outgoing connections, for some reason.
D
Deleted member 12837
Unconfirmed Member
There are a lot of threads about routers, so I figured rather than make a brand new one I'd try posting my question in here. I'm in the market for a wireless N router with gigabit ethernet for my apartment. I've heard that if you have 802.11g devices connecting to certain routers, it pulls the connection down to that level so I'll never be able to take advantage of the speed of N, and that I need a dual-band router to get around this. Is that true?
Also, I think I've narrowed my search down to these 3:
D-Link DIR-825
Netgear WNDR3700
Apple Airport Extreme
Any thoughts on which is better? There are so many polarizing reviews on Amazon, so it's really hard to figure out which is less failure-prone. The D-Link is a LOT cheaper than the other 2 which makes it a pretty attractive option if they're all around the same performance-wise.
Also, I think I've narrowed my search down to these 3:
D-Link DIR-825
Netgear WNDR3700
Apple Airport Extreme
Any thoughts on which is better? There are so many polarizing reviews on Amazon, so it's really hard to figure out which is less failure-prone. The D-Link is a LOT cheaper than the other 2 which makes it a pretty attractive option if they're all around the same performance-wise.
Crazymoogle
Member
The Netgear has been amazing for me over the last few months - pretty much a nextgen Gamerlounge (back when that line was good). Great speed, lots of options, I can have 4 concurrent wifi networks if needed, and 4 gigabit ports. (ie: I can enable a guest network temporarily for the DS, which can only use WEP, and then disable it later, without losing settings.
There's certainly something to be said for the Airport Extreme, but only 3 ports is killer. :/
There's certainly something to be said for the Airport Extreme, but only 3 ports is killer. :/
Dreams-Visions
Member
I'm a cheap bastard with this kind of stuff.
I bought 4 wireless N refurbished Linksys routers for $25. I installed DDWRT on all of them and have them wirelessly connected together at N speeds (150mbps +) and all of my hardware (TVs, desktop computers, game consoles) are connected somewhere in the house to one of the routers via ethernet cable. one of the 4 is connected to the modem and the other 3 are connected to that one as clients. it's so fast, you'd think it was a hard line connected straight to the modem.
for $100, I networked my home in a way that provides maximum speed for internal video streaming or external downloading and uploading for less than what many would normally pay for just one decent router.
I bought 4 wireless N refurbished Linksys routers for $25. I installed DDWRT on all of them and have them wirelessly connected together at N speeds (150mbps +) and all of my hardware (TVs, desktop computers, game consoles) are connected somewhere in the house to one of the routers via ethernet cable. one of the 4 is connected to the modem and the other 3 are connected to that one as clients. it's so fast, you'd think it was a hard line connected straight to the modem.
for $100, I networked my home in a way that provides maximum speed for internal video streaming or external downloading and uploading for less than what many would normally pay for just one decent router.
D
Deleted member 12837
Unconfirmed Member
Crazymoogle said:
Ok, well it sounds like I might just put up the extra cash and get the Netgear.
So how exactly does the whole "dual-band" 2 frequency spectrums work, as well as mixing N and G devices? How do I need to set it up so my wired, wireless N, and wireless G devices get the maximum benefit?
Crazymoogle
Member
404Ender said:
Well, there are two networks - 1 at the regular 2.4GHz and 1 at 5GHz
B/G/N (2.4GHz): Where most of your traffic is going to go. (DS/PSP/PS3/360/etc)
A/N (5GHz): Where some specialized traffic will go (PCs with N adapters, iPad, etc)
The two frequencies don't bug out each other, but if you, say, put an .n device on the 2.4GHz band along with .g devices, the .n is going to be throttled down whenever the .g device is in use. (This isn't a problem at 5GHz since few devices support it, and there's no .g at that band) I know the iPhone 4 supports .n but I'm not sure if it can work at 5GHz, I'll give that a try tonight (just got my phone today.)
You can setup a second network on each frequency (typically called a "guest network"), which allows you to specify a different encryption and settings, but again, I think if .g and .n coexist it could be throttled? It's more useful to have as a real guest network where you can specify different settings (as I said, you can have a .b/.g WEP network for your DS that you can disable when you don't need it, but keep everything more secure on a .g/.n WPA2 network, like your PC, 360, Wii, and so on).
D
Deleted member 12837
Unconfirmed Member
Crazymoogle said:
Ok, that makes sense, thanks for explaining all of that.
So are the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz literally separate, connectable networks (2 different names, passwords, etc that I'll have to set up) or are they just the different frequency ranges using the same encryption and credentials?
I probably won't need a second network on each frequency, none of us has a gaming system right now. Our laptops will be on the 5 Ghz (they're all .n devices) and our iPhone 3GSs will stay on the 2.4 Ghz network. Maybe I'll set up a Guest network for actual guests on the 2.4 Ghz frequency.
Do the .g devices actually need to be in use to throttle .n devices on the same network, or merely turned on and connected to the network? (ex: an iPhone sitting on my desk connected to the network but not in use)
Crazymoogle
Member
404Ender said:
Completely seperate networks with seperate credentials and wireless encryption, that all use the same wired internet connection (eg: cable modem or whatever) that you give it. You could give them the same name, pass, and encryption if you wanted, but they would still show up as seperate names in a wifi search. (This is why a lot of 802.11n routers you see have two or even three physical antennas - its meant to cover both frequency bands. The WNDR3700 uses internal antennas.)
The guest network you can use on each frequency basically doubles the number of discrete networks (to 4), with the exception that they're using the same spectrum.
404Ender said:
I'm told that it's only for use - like, when the iPhone is pulling data, traffic throttles down to .g bandwidth, but for idle connections it's fine. I can't find a source article at the moment, but that's what I remember reading. (Found an apple forum post confirming, I guess...)
And yeah, just checked and as far as I can tell the iPhone 4 is 802.11n on 2.4GHz only (makes sense, as someone else on GAF pointed out they don't want a third antenna on this thing. :lol )
SuicideUZI
Member
I was thinking about upgrading to the Apple Airport Extreme dual-band router, but I was wondering if anyone has done speed tests with wired connections?
I currently have a D-Link DGL-4300 which has 1gbit ports, but the highest speed I ever see when transferring files over CAT6 cable to other computers on the network is around 88mbit.
I currently have a D-Link DGL-4300 which has 1gbit ports, but the highest speed I ever see when transferring files over CAT6 cable to other computers on the network is around 88mbit.
SuicideUZI
Member
maharg said:
positive
Keep in mind that you are also limited by your hard drive's transfer speed as well, my old 500GB sata 150 drive from Seagate couldn't pump out more than 88mbits sustained so I could have everything hooked up with some super fancy fiber and it wouldn't transfer any faster.
Good point as well, I always get that shit messed up myself. I hate the way shit is measured in this age.maharg said:
SuicideUZI
Member
maharg said:
I am sure I am not measuring in megabytes, I get around 11MB/s which equals 88mbit and i have a 10,000RPM WD VelociRaptor HDD, when transferring files to it from an external USB HDD I get over 30MB/s so its not a HDD limitation either
Well 11MB is pretty fucking terrible, have you tried futsing around the NIC's connection settings in Windows? Mine has a shit ton of options, like "green ethernet" options that limit it's speed, maybe the auto-negotiation is choosing a slower speed, jumbo frames might be disabled(although that may need to stay disabled), I dunno though, seems like no NIC would ship these days that slow and I doubt any driver for a NIC would cripple it that much.
But if jumbo frames are enabled you might try enabling it as Dlink claims it really kills performance.
But if jumbo frames are enabled you might try enabling it as Dlink claims it really kills performance.
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