[Q] Improving home wifi... 3 questions - General Questions and Answers

So I'm thinking of getting that new badass Linksys N900 given the superb ratings & review and because I have like an 8 year old wireless router. So here are my basic questions.
1. Currently I have a 4 port Lynksys router connected to my cable modem and I have 3 computers hardwired to that. Off the final 4th port I have a Lynksys wireless router which is mounted up higher. I do this as my wireless router does not have enough ports to handle the 3 computers I want hardwired. SO I have always wondered ... am I losing wifi speed by having a wireless router connected to my router?
2. Should I cut that router on router setup out if I go to a new wireless router that has points for hardwired connections?
3. On this new Lynksys do you think it makes a difference - in terms if getting access to farther places in my home AND higher speeds all over the home - if I mount this way up high on a wall versus on my desk?

Lock-N-Load said:
So I'm thinking of getting that new badass Linksys N900 given the superb ratings & review and because I have like an 8 year old wireless router. So here are my basic questions.
1. Currently I have a 4 port Lynksys router connected to my cable modem and I have 3 computers hardwired to that. Off the final 4th port I have a Lynksys wireless router which is mounted up higher. I do this as my wireless router does not have enough ports to handle the 3 computers I want hardwired. SO I have always wondered ... am I losing wifi speed by having a wireless router connected to my router?
2. Should I cut that router on router setup out if I go to a new wireless router that has points for hardwired connections?
3. On this new Lynksys do you think it makes a difference - in terms if getting access to farther places in my home AND higher speeds all over the home - if I mount this way up high on a wall versus on my desk?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably not the best forum to post this on (a networking forum would probably get you a much better answer, but:
1. No. As long as you're connected with 100/1000mbps, the WiFi radio itself is the limiting factor. Piggybacking two a router off a router won't have a noticeable effect on your transfer speeds.
2. To see the maximum benefit fron N900, you will need to be using clients (adapters) that support 3x3 spatial streams over the 5GHz spectrum, and that also clearly state they support '900'). These are not built into the majority of devices, and are quite expensive as far as adapters go.
You will notice some improvement in range regardless of whatever clients you connect (more powerful radio in the router), but if you're using single stream N clients (smartphones, iPads, cheap laptops etc.) You won't see any improvement on actual throughput at all assuming your old router was 'N' capable. If it was 'G' only, it's worth upgrading to N if you do a lot of local transfers, if you have a lot of clients, or if you stream audio/video a lot.
I hope this kinda helps and doesn't confuse you more, sorry but it's really not my strong suit. There's an excellent Australian forum called Whirlpool which is dedicated to networking and ISPs, although the regional stuff may not be relevant you may find a better answer there.
Good luck!

Have you considered flashing your Linksys router with DD-WRT or Tomato? There are lots of "how-to's" with a quick Google search; and it may solve your problems...particularly #3.

jdmarano said:
Have you considered flashing your Linksys router with DD-WRT or Tomato? There are lots of "how-to's" with a quick Google search; and it may solve your problems...particularly #3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not.. I will look into it as I am not even sure what his means.. but if it is in Google, I will research
Edit... BEFSR41 router not supported, WRT54G wireless is supported.. now to find out more
Maybe my stuff is not as old as I thought and still useful? Or is it in fact dated like I think and I am losing out?
BEFSR41 router
WRT54G wireless

Lock-N-Load said:
I do not.. I will look into it as I am not even sure what his means.. but if it is in Google, I will research
Edit... BEFSR41 router not supported, WRT54G wireless is supported.. now to find out more
Maybe my stuff is not as old as I thought and still useful? Or is it in fact dated like I think and I am losing out?
BEFSR41 router
WRT54G wireless
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah the old WRT54G. One of the best and most customisable routers ever made. Unfortunately, in this day and age it'll also be your bottleneck. G wireless maxes out at 54mbps. Even single-stream N wireless (common on phones and tablets) maxes out at 72mbps. Even budget implementations of N in laptops, desktops etc. generally use 150mbps max throughput. There are all theoretical numbers, and don't include overheads or anything like that.
The other thing you need to consider is whether you are aiming to boost file transfer speed, or internet browsing/gaming/streaming speed. Boosting your wireless gear will get all your clients talking as fast as they can, but there'll be no benefit in it for you at all if you're on a 2mbps ADSL connection. Even B wireless can handle that.
If it's LAN transfers and LAN gaming you're going for, then the wireless upgrade is a winner. If it's internet-side speeds you want to boost, you may be better off putting the money into a higher-speed broadband plan

Related

Does a cable provided wireless router work as good a aftermarket one?

I got a few question on a few topics related to each other.
#1
Does a cable provided. Wireless router work as good a aftermarket one?
#2
My G1 work faster on my Linksys router at my old house verses my G1 using my cable providers wireless router. Any one else notice this too?
Now for the second part.
#3
Will the cable companys wireless router reduce the performance of Wi-Fi versus aftermarket wireless routers, Regarding Wi-Fi calling.
#4
How can I improve my Wi-Fi calling while at home?
I know if kids are playing online games Wi-Fi calling quality is horrible, If I hear anything at all.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App
The answer depends on how you had the linksys router setup verses the cable company provided one and on what IEEE 802.11 protocols are available from each router. Ignoring 802.11a, since the G2x does not support that protocol, 802.11n is the best protocol to be using, it provides the largest bandwidth, most distance, fastest speed, and most MIMO streams.
802.11g is almost as good.
I would also say that you want to be able to use wpa2 as your encryption protocol.
Can I turn off the wireless and use my Linksys and get better performance? I need more wired Ethernet ports.
By the way both are G.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App
I do not think you will get any noticeable difference in performance between the routers. Using the Linksys router might safe you a few dollars per month on the internet bill, if you can return the provided router and just use a provided cable modem.
Does your current internet plan provide the same down/up speeds as the plan you had at your old house? Where I am you can get plans with speeds ranging any where from 5 mb to 50 mb and if you do not ask for a more costly higher speed plan you get the 5 mb speed plan by default.
Most of the routers they give you with "internet service" are garbage. Aftermarket will almost always work better, provided you bought yourself a decent router.
Second possibility, is your new house isn't as friendly for wireless. I do networking for a living, so I've setup plenty of wireless networks at all different types of clients. There are some building, (or sometimes, even certain rooms) that will absolutely never get a good wireless signal. If the house is particularly old, they might have the inside of the walls with chicken wire. In the right (or this case, wrong,) configuration this can create a faraday cage. (google it, I'm not going to explain it here ) Sometimes certain electrical conduits can cause enough interference to mess up a wireless signal. Hell, sometimes your neighbor can have something that's creating issues.
Only thing you can really do is play with router placement, the channel (I'd suggest staying away from 6, especially if you have a microwave), internal router settings. There is an app you can get from the market (free) called wifi analyzer. Use it, perhaps someone is using a wireless router on the same channel as yours in the area, and your getting collisions.
As for the second part, your kids playing games are saturating your available bandwith. If that didn't happen with your old router (and I'm also going to assume that your internet connection is the same speed/latancey. If it's not, well, then all this reply is worthless), I'd try to use that.
Just tossing out some ideas, got a few minutes to kill. Good luck.
Thanks you.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

Does anyone's Infinity go higher than 65Mbps? This is nuts

I finally upgrade my network to Gigabit and True dual band N wireless, and I'm trying to get my Transformer Infinity to see higher 802.11n speeds than 65Mbps. I hope this is not another limitation to this tablet, otherwise I'm going to have to get rid of it.
My wireless N speeds are capable up to 450Mbps,
My XPS M1210 laptop with Dell 1500 Draft N card can connect at 270Mbps and I got that laptop back in 2006.
My Blackberry Playbook which is dual band capable (unlike the Transformer) connected easily to the 5GHz broadcast.
My Transformer Infinity is connected to the 2.4GHz band like my laptop and it's disappointing me with this 65Mbps speed.
You're disappointed with 65Mbps? My networks only 20/2 and i'm fine. What do you need more that 65Mbps on a tablet for?
What the heck would you need 450Mbps for? Even if the I/O issue didn't exist, it's still be bloody pointless. It's a waste as a server, p2p doesn't go faster than the seeder's connection, and even for profesisonal online gaming 20Mbps is more than enough.
Please tell me this isn't about "It should be capable because I want it to.".
Wouldn't this be a result of lacking the 5ghz band as well as only having 1 antenna?
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T
I have 192kbps max, count yourself lucky you have even 65mb XD
Sent from my Xperia S using XDA Premium HD app
Am I reading this right?
65mbps? You are mad at that? You can stream 1080p videos without a sweat.
I'm in one floor above my router in my bedroom right now and I'm getting 3mbps (not on an Infinity). Even when I'm ONE FOOT from the router I can't get much more than 20mbps.
Sounds like all he's doing is bragging about his net speed, if that's even true.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
wifesabitch said:
Am I reading this right?
65mbps? You are mad at that? You can stream 1080p videos without a sweat.
I'm in one floor above my router in my bedroom right now and I'm getting 3mbps (not on an Infinity). Even when I'm ONE FOOT from the router I can't get much more than 20mbps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe he's talking about the reported connection speed from the network card. The TF is limited to 72mbps and has no 5ghz band. 65mbps connection does not equate to 65mbps transfer. I can generally transfer at no more than about 15mbps down which is significantly slower than my laptop on the same router.
It is unfortunate that they chose to limit it rather than giving us the option to trade off power for speed. I can just barely stream full blu-ray spec video on a good day.
It's highly likely that the TF700 maxes at 65mb. I've never checked my connection speed on the tablet before, but my router transmits at 450mb/s and only my desktop reaches that connection speed because it has a 450mb/s tp-link card. My laptops Intel card maxes at 300mb/s.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda app-developers app
-Cupper- said:
You're disappointed with 65Mbps? My networks only 20/2 and i'm fine. What do you need more that 65Mbps on a tablet for?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I'm very disappointed, and what I'm about to explain next I hope to at least persuade or at least inform on the details of why 65Mbps is simply not enough for a modern day wireless device.
First I'm not talking about my internet speeds. Is the 20/2 you posted the upload and download speeds from your ISP, well that's ok, it's a little above the nation's average.
When I'm saying my Infinity is only pulling 65Mbps I'm talking about the speed it's achieving from the wireless on my local network.
common speeds are generally 100Mbps for Ethernet if using the an old 10/100Mbit router, and 54Mbps over wireless if using a Wireless G router.
10/100Mbps speeds have been around for more than a decade now and have been succeeded by Gigabit ethernet offering 1000Mbps. Wireless speeds have gone past 54Mbps since 802.11n was officially certified in 2009.
If you stream video from your computer, HTPC, HD Game console (PS3/X360),
Transfer large files between your computers, do any kind of remote desktop, your bandwidth on your local network comes into play.
What I'm trying to do is optimize the performance of Splashtop THD which requires massive bandwidth for streaming games between a PC and a tablet.
Under my old Belkin N150 G+ router I was only getting 65Mbps, which I thought was the max speed that the router would do because my XPS laptop was pulling the same rate over wireless (till I discovered that I never enabled the b/g/n 20/40MHz bandwidth capability on my laptop's network adapter to get higher speeds, so now my laptop is doing 270Mbps on my new N900 router where it initially was doing 130Mbps before I enabled the 20/40MHz)
Looking at the network settings on the Transformer Infinity doesn't have any option for 20/40MHz setting. I already knew it couldn't do dual band and be able to see a 5GHz broadcast but the fact that it's only showing 65Mbps, shows that this device wifi card is even more limited.
When I initially got Splashtop THD installed on my Transformer Infinity to test this out, the lag pretty much killed me let alone the degradation was pretty huge. I later read up from Splashtop support pages that the performance is dependent upon the bandwidth. Which makes since, so I used my D-Link USB ethernet adapter and connected my Infinity over a LAN connection at 100Mbps. This improved Splashtop THD quite a bit, there was still some lag but the quality look decent.
Here are some example screenshots I took of Splashtop THD playing at 100Mbps
http://systemwars.com/forums/index....ss-effect-2-on-my-transformer-infinity-tshbr/
This setup is moot since the device is not mobile anymore since I got it on a 100Mb ethernet adapter. This drove my attention to upgrade to Gigabit and true Wireless N speeds.
Luckily in 2012. Gigabit speeds is a common feature of a $70 price ranged router, but I wanted something more than the typical N300 routers so I got the big daddy N900 so I could do 450Mbps wireless which over 4x the amount I was getting over ethernet.
But sadly my goal is stopped in it's tracks due to the Transformer Infinity having the hardware of a pinto.
How on Earth could anyone think 65Mbps max for Wifi in 2012, on a tablet of all devices is enough.
Hell this puts the Transformer Infinity out of the realm of being a decent streaming media device, when it can't even hang with modern media device's mobile speeds.
the_game_master said:
Yes I'm very disappointed, and what I'm about to explain next I hope to at least persuade or at least inform on the details of why 65Mbps is simply not enough for a modern day wireless device.
First I'm not talking about my internet speeds. Is the 20/2 you posted the upload and download speeds from your ISP, well that's ok, it's a little above the nation's average.
When I'm saying my Infinity is only pulling 65Mbps I'm talking about the speed it's achieving from the wireless on my local network.
common speeds are generally 100Mbps for Ethernet if using the an old 10/100Mbit router, and 54Mbps over wireless if using a Wireless G router.
10/100Mbps speeds have been around for more than a decade now and have been succeeded by Gigabit ethernet offering 1000Mbps. Wireless speeds have gone past 54Mbps since 802.11n was officially certified in 2009.
If you stream video from your computer, HTPC, HD Game console (PS3/X360),
Transfer large files between your computers, do any kind of remote desktop, your bandwidth on your local network comes into play.
What I'm trying to do is optimize the performance of Splashtop THD which requires massive bandwidth for streaming games between a PC and a tablet.
Under my old Belkin N150 G+ router I was only getting 65Mbps, which I thought was the max speed that the router would do because my XPS laptop was pulling the same rate over wireless (till I discovered that I never enabled the b/g/n 20/40MHz bandwidth capability on my laptop's network adapter to get higher speeds, so now my laptop is doing 270Mbps on my new N900 router where it initially was doing 130Mbps before I enabled the 20/40MHz)
Looking at the network settings on the Transformer Infinity doesn't have any option for 20/40MHz setting. I already knew it couldn't do dual band and be able to see a 5GHz broadcast but the fact that it's only showing 65Mbps, shows that this device wifi card is even more limited.
When I initially got Splashtop THD installed on my Transformer Infinity to test this out, the lag pretty much killed me let alone the degradation was pretty huge. I later read up from Splashtop support pages that the performance is dependent upon the bandwidth. Which makes since, so I used my D-Link USB ethernet adapter and connected my Infinity over a LAN connection at 100Mbps. This improved Splashtop THD quite a bit, there was still some lag but the quality look decent.
Here are some example screenshots I took of Splashtop THD playing at 100Mbps
http://systemwars.com/forums/index....ss-effect-2-on-my-transformer-infinity-tshbr/
This setup is moot since the device is not mobile anymore since I got it on a 100Mb ethernet adapter. This drove my attention to upgrade to Gigabit and true Wireless N speeds.
Luckily in 2012. Gigabit speeds is a common feature of a $70 price ranged router, but I wanted something more than the typical N300 routers so I got the big daddy N900 so I could do 450Mbps wireless which over 4x the amount I was getting over ethernet.
But sadly my goal is stopped in it's tracks due to the Transformer Infinity having the hardware of a pinto.
How on Earth could anyone think 65Mbps max for Wifi in 2012, on a tablet of all devices is enough.
Hell this puts the Transformer Infinity out of the realm of being a decent streaming media device, when it can't even hang with modern media device's mobile speeds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to set your expectations properly however , I believe it is quite common if not universal across tabs to limit wifi to 65 or 72 mbps. I'm not sure if there are any mainstream tabs that support more.
You need a dual-band router and a dual-band capable device. Right now your tf700t is a single-band device. So you cannot get higher than 65mbps.
i don't think it is single band/dual band issue
to get the full 450Mb speed on an N device you have to have 3 antenna's 150Mb each at 40mhz
40Mhz is fully supported on the 5Ghz band but not really at the 2.4ghz (but it is working on this crowded band but it will take then 1-9 channels so if there are a lot of access point around then it won't work anyway very good)
so the tablet has a single antenna in the 2.4ghz range only doing 20mhz then it will not go over 72Mb thats just the max
Verstuurd van mijn ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T met Tapatalk
First, reported WIFI Connection speeds are so fake it's hardly worth talking about. I have had devices connect at 54mbps that were far faster at transfer than other devices that connect at 300mbps.
Second 5ghz band is actually terrible for true mobile devices, it has bad range and bad wall penetration which is exacerbated by devices moving around a lot. I have 5ghz on my phone and it's unusable, connecting using 2.4ghz is so much faster and more stable. The new Ipad has 5ghz support but the forums are full of people talking about how unusable it is.
Now all that said I have to agree with the OP that the throughput on the TF is rather disappointing. It's borderline in it's ability to stream full spec hd video. My original TF101 actually has slightly better throughput than my 700 even though it also only connects at <65mbps.
I did apply some of the tweaks from the dev thread with minimal success in improving streaming.
If we had full 450Mbps capacity, everyone would be whining about the "ridiculously low battery life."
Or have people conveniently forgotten that more speed requires more power?
ShadowLea said:
If we had full 450Mbps capacity, everyone would be whining about the "ridiculously low battery life."
Or have people conveniently forgotten that more speed requires more power?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd happily settle for 270Mbps which my old laptop could do.
Has anyone attached a wifi adapter to their Transformer dock's USB? I wonder will that work alternatively, the same way the D-Link USB Ethernet adapters work from the USB.
Midnitte said:
Wouldn't this be a result of lacking the 5ghz band as well as only having 1 antenna?
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It has 2 antenna's
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
This doesn't make sense, there's no way Splashtop requires more than those 65Mbps.
Splashtop probably uses some low-profile H.264 encoder, and Tegra 3's own H.264 video decoder only supports that codec up to 40Mbps at 1080p. The tablet's own hardware video decoder would be stuttering well before reaching those 65Mbps.
The BluRay discs have a maximum combined Audio+Video bandwidth (highest-quality 1080p video + 7.1 lossless sound) of 48Mbps. Splashtop is probably just using stereo MP3 @ <320Kbps or even AAC @ <192Kbps for audio, which leaves with more than 60Mbps for the 1080p video alone, which is way more than what nVidia's hardware codec can widthstand.
What you seem to have is a problem with output latencies, which could be due to:
- Slow CPU in the PC that is being used for coding the video+audio stream on-the-fly
- Poor performing parts somewhere in your LAN/WAN (slow router for example)
In case it might be the PC's CPU, try lowering the resolution in the game. It's not like you need it to be playing at 1920*1080. I'm pretty sure you'll still get gorgeous graphics in a 10" screen if you play at 1280*720 with 4X super-sampling antialiasing, for example. Or maybe 1600*900, or 1360*768.
ToTTenTranz said:
This doesn't make sense, there's no way Splashtop requires more than those 65Mbps.
Splashtop probably uses some low-profile H.264 encoder, and Tegra 3's own H.264 video decoder only supports that codec up to 40Mbps at 1080p. The tablet's own hardware video decoder would be stuttering well before reaching those 65Mbps.
The BluRay discs have a maximum combined Audio+Video bandwidth (highest-quality 1080p video + 7.1 lossless sound) of 48Mbps. Splashtop is probably just using stereo MP3 @ <320Kbps or even AAC @ <192Kbps for audio, which leaves with more than 60Mbps for the 1080p video alone, which is way more than what nVidia's hardware codec can widthstand.
What you seem to have is a problem with output latencies, which could be due to:
- Slow CPU in the PC that is being used for coding the video+audio stream on-the-fly
- Poor performing parts somewhere in your LAN/WAN (slow router for example)
In case it might be the PC's CPU, try lowering the resolution in the game. It's not like you need it to be playing at 1920*1080. I'm pretty sure you'll still get gorgeous graphics in a 10" screen if you play at 1280*720 with 4X super-sampling antialiasing, for example. Or maybe 1600*900, or 1360*768.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're confusing "Reported Connection Speed" with actual throughput. No wifi connection reported at 65mbps get's anywhere near 65mbps sustained throughput. The TF at 65 may get 20mbps on a really good day. My laptop connected at 150 might get 35-40.
That said I use run my desktop at full 1080 and have never had streaming issues with splashtop using it on either of my TFs.
ToTTenTranz, I haven't ruled out that poor performing PC could be contributing to latencies.
I am running the PC game near max settings, mainly since I'm trying to demonstrate Splashtop THD to it's full advertised potential and so far I have tested and confirmed that the quality is improved when using a D-Link 100Mbit USB Ethernet adapter over the wireless connection. I would like to see how much further Splashtop THD could perform if had at least double the bandwidth, but now it seems the only way I'll be able to test this is if I get a 1,000Mbit USB Ethernet adapter.

[Q] "Gamestream Ready" routers?

So I just got myself a Shield. (yay!) I was noticing that Nvidia has a list of routers that it recommends (here: http://shield.nvidia.com/accessories-hardware) calling them "Gamestream Ready" routers that are optimized for PC game streaming. Is there really something unique/special about these routers? Are they doing something software-wise that other routers aren't? Or is this just a random collection of good quality routers??
I've got a 5th-gen Apple Airport Extreme which seems to work fine with my Shield, but I'm curious to know if there's something I'm missing. (what makes these routers better for Gamestream then mine?) Thanks,
If it's working I wouldn't worry about it. Some wireless routers block some types of broadcast and multicast packets. I had 2 shields in a taco bell today connected to their wireless and they couldn't see each other. That's a common setup at public hotspots, it doesn't allow 1 wireless client to talk to the other wireless clients, only out to the internet. So technically you could buy a cheap wireless router that does that at home. That's one reason for the list.
The other reason I can think of is WMM which is QOS for wireless. Not all routers have it. Not all people think it's the best thing for wireless, but I will tell you that when you share your connection with 10 friends, WMM is key. If you are the only one at your house on your own wireless, it doesn't much matter.
My 2 cents.

There used to be a wifi router that daisy chained 4g USB sticks

About 4 years ago I remember seeing (at an event I did) an IT guy with a router which looked rather standard, but which had 4 USB ports on the back of it. In each of those ports they could put a USB 4g stick and pull bandwidth from each of 4, merging the bandwidth together and creating an internet connection, wifi, and ethernet router.
I can't for the life of me find this thing anymore, but with the speeds of XLTE or the like, this would be amazing, and needed for some of the programs I do.
Can anyone help? Looking to harness the power and speed of multiple 4g usb/mifi/?? to get a faster connection to a greater number of people.
Thanks!

Need an internet / network solution .

Ok, please advise if their is a "better way" .
I need an internet and network solution. I only get 2Mbs with a fibre optic cable at a work location, as we are very very far from exchange. Everything on the cable is Slow. ISP cannot improve line speed unless we pay for dedicated line which requires them to dig and install . Oh and a cheap quote of £20,000 .
Anyhow, I want to avoid this by :
My possible solution , is a 4G Router to work with a BT sim card. We get about 20Mbs on a sim card. (Which would be fine for us)
I am looking to run an External Ariel /antenna from the 4g Router, to hit the best signal. Maybe place this on the Roof, or side of the building.
From the 4G Router, I would like a 4 Port 1GB Switch. (If router does not have ports) To hard wire an ethernet printer & Macbook. Whilst using WIFI from the 4G Router with portable items , like Laptops that can also print as well as Macbook.
Please can someone help, with what products I need, maybe link to them too.
I.e,
4G Router
1GB Switch
Ariel / Antenna
(Is it Coax cable from Router to Antenna) are these ends screw on? F Connector I think the Ends are called ?)
CAT5 for Hard Wire connections , Printer / Macbook.
Please advice ,
Many thanks
Craig
Fact is: Ethernet ( wired connection ) is always ways faster than Wi-Fi ( wireless connection ).
In my experience, using an 802.11g router, the speed of the wired connection is twice that of wireless. When using an 802.11n router, the speed of the wired connection was only 50 % faster than the wireless. Here are more results from my tests: Wired connection average download from the Internet is 25mbps.

Categories

Resources