Topic 'Router Recommendation (yet another)' in forum 'Networking' - dslreports.com

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 09:20:23 EDT

mozerd posted : Absolutely no issues with wireless printers when wireless networks are properly setup in the venue and only good quality wireless printers are used who support N/AC wireless networks. B,A,g wireless printers are very unreliable.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 11:31:53 EDT

Anav posted : Hi Kevinds, ditto and I only have a mother in-law to support. ;-)

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 21:11:42 EDT

kevinds posted :

said by bbear2:

might be moving to wireless instead

My suggestion is not to move to a wireless printer.. I have yet to find a stable one (I quit looking though).. lol

I have gone as far as refusing to support people with wireless printers... If you are looking for a future printer, go with a printer with Ethernet.. Most WiFi printers also have Ethernet, but not all.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:09:07 EDT

bbear2 posted : 100M now and giga when available. USB ports for some printing but might be moving to wireless instead, the rest and majority is for file sharing and archive.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 14:47:18 EDT

kevinds posted : What internet speed does your friend have? Any plans to increase their speeds in the next 5 years?

What will the USB ports be used for?

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 22:13:16 EDT

doczenith1 posted : I would go with the RT-AC88U if you plan on using the VPN client on the router. The 88U will do around 70-80 Mbps using OpenVPN vs around 50-60 on the 68U. Even faster VPN speeds of 150+ Mbps can be had with the brand new RT-AC86U although I wouldn't suggest that model for a business environment as it's firmware is not very stable at this moment and needs some time to mature.

Also, the AC68U does NOT have MU-MIMO (I own one). The 88U and 86U do.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:48:31 EDT

mozerd posted :

said by tullnd:

MU-MIMO = only benefits you if EVERY SINGLE DEVICE support MU-MIMO. Odds of that in a home with more than 2-3 devices?

Not true ... SISO devices benefit greatly when exposed to MU-MIMO !!! You can search some of my historical posts here to learn why SISO devices do benefit immensely.

»youtu.be/kjapSG_CvJc

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:18:48 EDT

tullnd posted : You post a lot of Wifi requirements, with no information about the client devices.

MU-MIMO = only benefits you if EVERY SINGLE DEVICE support MU-MIMO. Odds of that in a home with more than 2-3 devices? Highly unlikely. I'm not saying don't buy it...I'm just saying, if you have a bunch of phones or tablets/devices that are more than two years old, they almost certainly do NOT support it...so buying it now, may not be worth it. Will you have even aged all those devices out within 5 years? If not, maybe drop it from consideration.

Coverage. Most of the higher end Wifi routers just amplify the signal more to increase coverage. That works great....if you live on a farm with no neighbors near by. I live on a half acre lot in a subdivision. It's a decent sized yard. My neighbors are a moderate distance from my house. Yet I have wifi saturation all over. Running a single Wifi router with an amplified signal, only boosts the noise and allows more interference to be an issue. If I lived with no neighbors nearby running their own wifi, a boosted signal for a big house would make sense. In suburbia or in apartments, it's the absolute worst idea possible and the exact opposite of what you want to do.

Tri-band, dual band, etc...Once you get beyond dual-band 5/2.4Ghz, most people see diminishing returns. Having two 5Ghz frequencies sounds great. Two different 5Ghz networks to separate your devices. Yet those are coming from the same spot, so you have to channel them separately. If you have neighbors, now you have two networks that are trying to find non-interference channels in your area, rather than just one. It rarely works out as beneficial as people think. It CAN be nice in some setups...but most of the time, it's a bad idea.

Also you said your PC's are all 5Ghz wifi. Are they all in the same spot? 5Ghz does NOT penetrate walls well at all. If you have stucco with metal lathing in it, it won't penetrate it at all. If you have drywall, as long as there's no metal studs, it'll probably penetrate one wall with about a 35-50% signal degradation. If these PC's are all in different rooms, you are NOT going to get good 5Ghz coverage from a single Wifi router.

Is this a larger house? It may make more sense to go with an Access Point solution. You can do a mesh type network with wireless backhaul(meaning only one device is connected to the router via ethernet, the others are connecting to each other wirelessly). This means you'll only get half the speed off each "meshed" AP, depending on how far away they are from the original AP. Depending on the coverage/feature set you want, you could get an "all in one" wifi/router and then additional AP's, but normally, the better performing Mesh AP's are often sold as kits, that may or may not include router functionality.

If someone has a house that's somewhere over 1500sq/ft, and they want 5Ghz coverage throughout the house, they're probably going to need at least two AP's. When you start talking 2000sq/ft, it can go up to 3 or more AP's. If you just need 5Ghz in one area and can survive on 2.4Ghz for the rest, than you may be ok up to 2500sq/ft. However, it's not just coverage, but number of devices. Most of those retail based wifi routers don't handle 6-7 concurrent connections that well. You also have to understand the bandwidth constraints within each wireless connection. So having 2-3 AP's around your house, can improve speeds because the devices are on separate wireless networks, not interfering with each other. This doesn't mean separate SSID's necessarily, that's a config decision.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 08:13:13 EDT

mozerd posted : My suggestion for you
NETGEAR - Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 03:30:55 EDT

bbear2 posted : Very helpful stuff here. ty.

Off hand I know that 5GHz is important as we've converted all the PCs to have 5GHz Wifi AC adapters. And those are a top priority. There's also the ever present need for 2.4GHz for the tablets and phones. that's where the solid WiFi in a otherwise congested 2.4GHz band is important.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 01:04:59 EDT

anon posted : 1. Firmware is the software that runs on the memory inside the router that makes it work. If a router was a computer, the firmware would be like Windows operating system. Each company has their own general flavor of firmware, with subtle difference between models. With almost all Asus routers, you can replace the Asus firmware with firmware designed by people in the open source community. Imagine upgrading a Apple desktop computer to Ubuntu(Linux). The open source firmware is usually designed more for power users so it has features not always available in the manufacture(stock) firmware. Some common 3rd party firmware is dd-WRT and Tomato. Long story short, the firmware/software that comes in the box is great, it's just also great that you can change it to something else if you want. See first link below for dd-WRT instructions and second link for Asus emulator to get a idea of what their firmware looks like.

»www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/inde ··· RT-AC68U

»event.asus.com/2012/nw/d ··· dex.html

2. Then you don't need it. DDNS is Dynamic DNS, which is used if you host a site or server at the business but don't have a static IP.

3. Loop back is the ability for the router's LAN to know it's own public WAN IP address. For example, my website is test.com, and I host it at work on IP 68.1.2.3. The website is actually on a computer/server connected to the router using a private 192.168.1.x IP. If you're on a different PC on that network, and you type in 68.1.2.3 into your browser, loop back is the router knowing you want to see the website that is on the 192.168.1.x server. Otherwise you have to remember to type the private IP to reach the site when in the office, and the public IP when out of the office. Long story short, does he host any sites or servers?

4. Of what type? Ooma? GV? Cisco? Avaya? Something else?

"Is that important to have and what effect will it have if it does vs. does not?"

Let me guess, BestBuy? Single band is one capable of Wifi 2.4Ghz. Dual band is capable of both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wifi. Some dual band routers can broadcast at both bands at the same time, while older ones can only do one or the other. Triband routers put out 3 networks. 1 that is 2.4Ghz and 2 that are 5Ghz. This extra 5Ghz band is so you can have more devices use them without their signal interfering with each other. If you only have computers and devices that can connect at Wifi 2.4Ghz, then you would have no need for a dual band router, nevermind a Tri-band router. What kind of devices do you have? PC? Phones? Game Consoles? IP cameras? Etc.

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:55:50 EDT

bbear2 posted : thanks for the ideas.

1. When you say "good firmware with 3rd party support" - what do you mean by 3rd party support?

2. DDNS requirements? Don't know what DDNS is.

3. Does he need loopback? No idea, why do people need loopback?

4. VOIP protocol? There are a few softphones (not sure which ones) and at least one ATA.

5. Basic SIP? No idea.

I also saw some routers advertising "tri-band". Is that important to have and what effect will it have if it does vs. does not?

Re: Router Recommendation (yet another)

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:46:38 EDT

anon posted : I would suggest the Asus RT-AC68U or RT-AC68P if you're less technical. Solid wireless chipset. good firmware with 3rd party support. Good CPU for decent throughput with built in VPN server support(no where near 1Gbps though). Two USB with 1 being 3.0, 5 gigabit ports (1WAN and 4LAN) and 3x3 MU-MIMMO. Great build quality and just generally one of the best consumer Wifi AC router on the market IMO.

Do you have any special DDNS requirements? Do you need loopback? What kind of protocol will the VOIP be using? Basic SIP?

»www.smallnetbuilder.com/ ··· -rtac68u

»www.asus.com/us/Networki ··· RTAC68U/

»www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 33320174

Router Recommendation (yet another)

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:59:28 EDT

bbear2 posted : I know these are not the most popular kinds of threads but I'm really stuck as to where to even start so bear with me. Any suggestions are welcome.

Trying to help a friend replace an existing router in a SOHO and home environment. About 12-15 devices (PCs, VOIP, tablets, TV, printers, NAS, etc.) could be used simultaneously, maximum of 3-4 streaming at once, 40-50 devices "registered". I think he needs/wants MU-MIMO. and wants it to last 5 years minimum. Budget is $200 but can be slightly flexible or with some sales discount.

Ideally (but not mandatory) it will have two USB ports and one of which is USB 3.0. 1Gb hardwired of at least 4 ports is a must. And solid Wifi signal and throughput is also a must. WiFi needs to be used with VOIP and therefore has to be solid. Would be good to have VPN built in if possible.
Beyond that I'm not sure what else to ask for or where to start.