Wireless router buyers guide 2014

ok thanks for th ehelp.

 

hey guys, I want to buy a new router and I'm stuck between these 2 choices:

Asus RT-N56U
Tp-Link N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router - TL-WDR4300

which would be the better choice? I want something that performs well on long range, as my bedroom is about 30m away from the router (unfortunately the whole telephonic setup is at the edge of our house, while my bedroom is on the opposite side... why it wasn't done in the middle of our house is beyond me)

our household is a relatively busy wireless one, with 2 laptops, 1 tablet, 3 smartphones, 1 PS3, and a PC. laptops and PC are used for gaming, and currently I'm really frustrated with no connection in my bedroom (got a stone-age tp-link router to be fair).

if you have any other suggestion in mind, feel free to name it. I only plan on spending up to 100 euro on a router, as I have other expenses and can't dish out too much on a router, but I want a solid performance from my router... doesn't make sense saving some money only to end up dissatisfied with the item

 

Asus would offer better range than TP-Link.

 

What about the TL-WDR4320? I can get a TL-WDR4310, which seems to be identical to the TL-WDR4300, for $64. That, or for $68 get a TL-WDR4320.

TL-WDR4320 specs

 

As far as I know all three are almost identical- in fact 4310 was supposed to be exactly like 4300 while 4320 is identical apart from the fact that it has two additional antennas.

I doubt that would be beneficial in any way but for additional $4 there's nothing to lose- apart from one thing. 3rt party firmware compatibility may suffer as you would need a separate build or you would be forced to manually change headers to make 4320 accept 4300/4310 firmwares (and two additional antennas wouldn't be used anyway with 4300/4310 firmware).

Apparently OpenWRT works fine on 4320 though, so I would be tempted to buy 4320 myself.

 

Hey downloads, if you have all the money in the world, which router would you pick as your overall best choice and why?

 

That's a hard question because ASUS RT-AC66U 802.11ac is very promising- it's damn fast and has overall good specs and off course 802.11ac standard which is so much faster than 802.11n, however firmware isn't very good yet and there are not 802.11ac cards yet so this pretty much renders it pointless at least for now.

Therefore Asus RT-N66U seems to be a better choice for now.

There's also one router that caught my eye- it's Netgear Centria WNDR4700. While its wireless performance is not exactly stellar, it's very fast on 5GHz band (as fast as 802.11ac routers in some cases). Uplink is especially fast which is good for backup purposes and bad for wireless HD streaming.
It also features a 3.5" HDD bay which you may utilize to make it a NAS and contrary to what most routers offer, this one had very good read/write speeds when formated in NTFS (by default it's EXT4). That's a very interesting router although only for those who would consider a single disk NAS otherwise.

For now Asus RT-N66U is the thing although I'd wait for 802.11ac Wi-Fi cards to hit the market as 802.11ac is so much better on 5GHz.
And to be honest I hope these routers stay expensive- with 80MHz channels you need just few people to make 5GHz overcrowded so hopefully most people will not pay for 802.11ac

 

thanks for the heads-up! I'll go for the Asus RT-N56U... I can buy a used one for half the price of the N66U, and although it's last-gen, can still beat most of today's routers

 

How is the WZR-600DHP? Buffalo Router?

 

Buffalo routers are good devices in general however they have switched to a modified DD-WRT as a firmware a while back and that's not so good.
DD-WRT is not that good performance-wise. While it adds lots of options that happens at a cost.

 

As long as the Routing Performance of Web connections is fine. The Dir-825 and few netgears ive had HATED World of Warcraft and online gaming and online performance one min I would get my full speed and the next I would not. I would just keep my Modem/Router and not bridge it but no QOS is a downer for me I have to have QOS for uploading or it kills my connection.

 

Really dont know what router to buy guys. I live in the UK btw.
I currently have the BT home hub that BT sent out when we got their package.
I done a speed test and my download speed is 6mbps which is really poor, and which is down to the router right ? Since through BT I can get speeds of up to 16mbps.
I dont mind spending up to £80 if it will make my speed faster.
Thankyou

 

Is this the speed you get while wired to the modem/router?

 

Yeah, 6mbps is what I got when I tested! With my laptop connected to my router.

 

If that is the case than router is not to blame. What speed are you paying for actually?

 

I got a TP-Link N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (TL-WDR4300) at ~$83 USD.

Current wireless router unit is Linksys WRT54GL.

Hoping that the new TP-Link N750 may make setting up my fairly recent Bother printer, for local network use, somewhat easier!!

Seemed silly to me to be worrying over a minor lesser price for a clearly lesser wireless router.

Anyway, to "downloads" --- Thanks very much!

 

Can't wait for 802.11ac products in 2013!

 

I'm having a helluva rough time with my present config.

I have a Lenovo Y580 w/ Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2200 BGN 2x2 HMC WiFi/Bluetooth Adapter
D-Link DIR-825 wireless router

i have a large house with a lot of walls, so I need the 2.4 GHz. However, 2 things really seem to be giving me problems

1. the laptop does NOT even see the 5 GHz band...at all. All my other devices (Samsung phone, Lenovo x-220, my wife's Toshiba, my daughters' laptops, etc) all see the 5 GHz band just fine. My laptop doesn't recognize it at all
2. I get CONSTANT auto disconnects/reconnects and have very intermittent speed issues. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.

i.e. I'll be doing fine, connected to the 2.4 GHz band just fine, downloads will zip along, web browsing is perfectly fine, then all of a sudden, I'll disconnect. I'll be the only one in the house, nobody around, nobody using any other devices, etc, and I'll completely disconnect. It'll auto-reconnect, then disconnect, reconnect, etc.

sometimes the problem solves itself. Sometimes I"ll go downstairs and unplug the router for 1 minute, plug it back in and it'll 'solve' the problems. Other times that won't work. I have unplugged the actual cable modem itself for 60 seconds and that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

what's funny is that even when I cannot connect to the internet, or the internet connection is very spotty, I'm able to connect to the other devices in the house with shared resources, such as my daughter's laptop (shared documents folder, etc)

I'm not sure if its the router or as it seems more likely, perhaps it's the laptop network card. I'm really rather confused as this laptop has performed fantastically for me, and this is really the only problem in the 7 months I've had it, and it's a recent problem (or at least, the problem seems to be getting worse).

Should I just bite the bullet and buy a new laptop wireless card? My other devices in the house don't *seem* to have the same problems as my personal laptop, but I'm the only one who uses his device to accss the internet almost constantly (doing on-line school and such)

 

Well Intel 2200 can't see 5GHz band because it's a single band card- it works only at 2.4GHz.
Are you using Windows 8 by any chance?

 

nope. Win7x64 Pro

here's the full config:

IdeaPad Y580
i7-3610
8 GB PC12800
240GB Mushkin SSD (Win7x64 Pro, SP1 installed)
1 TB Seagate 5400 RPM
nVidia GTX 660M (2GB)

and importantly:
Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2200 BGN 2x2 HMC WiFi/Bluetooth Adapter
Driver 15.3.1.2, 30 September 2012
D-Link DIR-825 router

I live in the boonies too, so there shouldn't be any neighboring networks causing me issues

 

I assume there's no updated driver from Lenovo? (I think there isn't but I wasn't very thorough)

 

the most updated driver I could find is the September 2013 one i listed. I had the most updated Lenovo driver before and it was causing me the same problems, so I found the intel chipset updated driver, and it is still causing the same issues

i'm almost to the point where I wonder if I shouldn't just upgrade the centrino 2200

The D-Link 825 is several years old, so perhaps I need to update that as well?

 

If other devices work with the D-Link than it shouldn't be its fault.
Upgrading from 2200 to a 6200/6300 or 6230 if you need Bluetooth certainly wouldn't be a bad move and even if it didn't help- it's not like it's expensive.
Plus with 6200 or 6300 you would be able to use 5GHz band so it's a win regardless.

 

ok, so perhaps an Intel 6300 -based card is the way forward now.

Time to do some card homework.

is there a somewhat updated list of the 6300-based cards somewhere? I'm not the brightest bulb so I can't look at the various cards and know which has what

 

6200/6205: two streams, dual band
6230/6235: two streams, dual band, bluetooth
6250: two streams, dual band, WiMax
6300: three streams, dual band (you need a three stream router and three antennas in the laptop to take advantage of it)

 

ah....so I believe that I have only 2 antennas in my laptop, as HWiNFO64 identifies the network card as Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2200 BGN 2x2 HMC WiFi/Bluetooth Adapter?

Guess that would mean the 62xx is more appropriate.

no idea what a 3-stream router is, time to do some more homework.

edit - ok, so holy crap. I just checked Lenovo's site and I think I might be completely out of luck. Apparently they have some type of BIOS thing that keeps you from changing the network card?

Looks like I might just have to go the lame-o route and get a USB wireless adapter.

ugh...now that's MORE homework to do...

 

There are cards meant for Lenovo laptops on sale so no need for USB one. Just buy a card that specifically mentions Lenovo.

 

well, I've been looking around, but apparently the only Lenovo mini-PC network cards are the 2200 ones. Of course, I might be looking in all the wrong places too.

 

Here: New Intel 6235ANHMW 6235 WiFi WLAN BT Bluetooth 4 0 HP Envy 4 6 Lenovo E430 | eBay, you cna find the 6200 and 6300 in the same flavors too.

 

Look in the Y580 Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) for the approved WiFi cards that Lenovo has white listed. I can't get into the Lenovo support site today. (As usual)

However, here are the options for the Y570/Y470 systems. Pay attention to the FRU listed. I've been told that I could buy one, directly from Lenovo that contain their FRU, but I haven't tried.

View attachment 90380 View attachment 90381

Good Luck!

Edit: Wow! You're really SOL if you have a Y480/Y580, for a WiFi upgrade.

I just got into the Y480/Y580 HMM. It appears that there is no Lenovo card that supports the 5.0 Ghz band.

View attachment 90387

 

are you sure that is a type I can use? I'm not sure that's the same pinout/form factor/whatever as the card I have

crap. I really DO need to go with a doggone USB "thumb drive" network adapter, don't I?

 

If you have a half-recent notebook, you have a half-height mPCI-e wireless adapter which is the same form factor as this one. Also the one I linked is listed for Lenovo Y series, you can always write to the seller to make sure it's compatible, but it is the same form factor. That much I can guarantee with 100% certainty.

From the listing:

 

yeah, crud. HWiNFO tells me I have an HM76 chipset

bah....

 

Just some followup...

I've now had this TP-Link N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (TL-WDR4300) for about a week.

Nice unit with gigabit ethernet speed.

Also very easy to set up for central home printing, with multiple computers (desktop and laptop; hard wired and wireless), and a single decent laser printer that is connected to the TP-Link N750 unit via a convenient 20' long/cheap USB 2.0 cable.

 

Looking for a AC router.

Which one would you recommend?

Asus RT-AC66U
Netgear R6300
Linksys E6500

Thanks!

 

I wouldn't buy an AC router at this point if I were you. You should wait until Intel releases next gen CPUs and along those most likely Intel Wi-Fi 7000 series which should support AC.

The reason why I won't recommend any AC routers at this point is how were they tested. Because of lack of proper 1300mbps AC cards what reviewers are doing is making one i.e. Asus RT-AC66U working as a router and then connecting another Asus RT-AC66U to a computer via Ethernet cable- making it work as a receiver/bridge.

I can't draw any real conclusions from such testing- making a $200 router work where a $25 Wi-Fi card should be may produce completely different results (as in a lot better). Also with both routers being identical and using the same firmware and the same wireless chip and quite expensive amps that normal Wi-Fi cards don't have, you get an unrealistically good scenario.

What if you pair Asus RT-AC66U that uses Broadcom radio with an Intel card or an Atheros? Will it affect speeds? It's possible- that was very common with 802.11n when it was new.

So while I realize I haven't answered your question I hope I haven't wasted your time. In my opinion it's not a good time to buy an AC router unless you really have to, because your last one just exploded.

 

Thank you for the detailed reply. You are right but since I have to replace my WNDR3700 router I was thinking to buy a last gen one.

Which would you recommend?
I need a very strong and stable signal + high speeds on 2.4Ghz.
I have a 150mbps fiber connection at home and it never deopa below 14-15MB/s.

 

These are not three routers- it's one router with different firmwares and looks

For all three:
Main chip (SoC) Broadcom 4706
2.4GHz radio Broadcom BCM4331
5GHz radio Broadcom BCM4360 (all three use the same SIGE amp too)

So the difference is firmware (where Asus looks bad), amps (Asus has none on 2.4GHz, Linksys uses Microsemi and Netgear SiGE) and RAM (Netgear and Linksys 128MB, Asus 256MB).

First generation of AC chipsets is unlikely to make the most of the technology- so again- I wouldn't buy it- but if I was to buy one of those almost-identical routers I would rule out Asus (even though it's a bit faster than the others its firmware is unstable) and between Netgear and Linksys I'd go for Netgear.

Still that's not a recommendation- it's a "what if I have to buy" thing.

 

Well I was asking about other recommendations beaides the 3 AC routers I mentioned.

Any good N routers worth buying?

 

There's also a Buffalo router that is based on the same Broadcom chip that the three we've talked about.
Broadcom were first to the market with their AC chip so they have it pretty much all to themselves.

As for 802.11n there are several good routers (see first post) but if you care about throughput you'd want a 1300mbps AC router (if you care only about range 802.11n will be just fine).

 

Question. Would buying a used router be a good idea? I'm most likely going to buy that netgear 3700 one thats $100. I see used ones for $60 or so. I'm worried b/c if they selling it used... it might not be good?

 

The best possible way to save money here is buy a refurbished unit from the manufacturer.
If you were to buy a used WNDR3700- make sure it's v2 (not v1 and not v3)

 

okay so if i buy a new one from amazon.com, it should be fine right?

 

Yes, that would be OK.

 

Hey last question downloads.

I could buy it on amazon for $100 on or ebay for $75

Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700V2 060449061314 | eBay


The thing is there is no box but it says its brand new. I also saw reviews from ppl who bought it from the seller and they say they like it. Do you think its worth it to save $25 buying this on ebay as oppose to amazon which would be brand new with box?

 

It's a good router and a good price but the decision is yours (I haven't looked through the seller's comments).
If the seller looks legit for you- it's a good deal.

 

Thanks. One last thing i want to ask again.



My linksys wrt54g is still pretty good for my laptop that works good with the wireless. However, when i download something big. it rarely goes over 200kbps on the laptop to download something. But when i download something on my desktop it always goes at least 500kbps. Sometimes it goes 800kbps and 1mbps when downloading when im looking at the download speed when its downloading. I'm not sure if my letters are right with the kbps or mbps but i think you know what i mean.


Is this b/c my desktop is wired which is why download speed is so fast?


Also is it because my linksys router is a G router which is why it would never go like the speed of my desktop? I mean sometimes it does go 500kbps when downloading a big 100mb file but its rare and speed always goes back to between 100-200 kbps.


If I use an N router such as the Netgear N router when downloading... would i see downloading speed go as fast as my desktop?

 

That sort of speed is not a router limitation- WRT54G is 802.11g which gives you real life download speeds of up to 20-25mbps so you don't need 802.11n router to max out your connection.
It is possible that you've been suffering from interference on 2,4GHz band and/or fading signal with distance. WNDR3700 works also in 5GHz band (although I don't know if your Wi-Fi cards do) and has better range so you may end up with higher download speeds via wireless because of this.

 

Hi downloads. Someone asked me what is my computer and wifi card.


Its an inspiron 5110.

This is what it shows for wireless adapter.

Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
Bluetooth Device (RFCOMM Protocol TDI)
Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter
DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card


Someone mentioned

The Dell Wireless 1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card adapter works on the 2.4GHz band ONLY. It is a card that supports b/g/n wireless networks.


Since the wifi card here doesn't work in 5ghz, that means the netgear wouldn't make it speed that much?

 

That depends- if the reduced speed was due to low signal strength WNDR3700 with better range would also speed up downloads also on 2.4GHz range.
If it was due to too many wireless networks on 2.4GHz it might not help too much.

Dell 2501 is Broadcom 4313 which does work only on 2.4GHz range and only one stream (150mbps theoretical connection). So it is not a good card to put it mildly.