[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Is Your Router's Transmit Power Juiced?

Interesting article...

Couple of things to consider however...

1) Conducted Path Measurements - you can measure each RF chain, but you need to consider that the impendance match for conducted path is 50 ohm, typical free space matching for EIRP is 37 ohm, so the numbers will change.

2) EIRP is a magical number - what is really important is TRP, and this can only be done in a RF chamber - Rohde&Schwarz has a mini chamber that works well (the DST-200), or one can go for the big-dog, the TS8991

Wireless OEM's spend big money on these items and similar, for example the "StarLab" SATIMO chamber -- which is a gold standard in the RF world.

The FCC's rules here, along with the EU, Anatel, and other regulatory agencies - many follow the guidance of the FCC - but at the same time, there is interpretation of these rules... there are weasel words perhaps, and also loopholes to be exploited -- bending, rather than breaking a given rule.

Most OEM's do have a team that is specifically focused on the Regulatory aspects of the products they develop.

I'm not saying that Asus is in the right or wrong, but this article is only one aspect. This is a rat-hole that perhaps SNB doesn't want to get in to - considering the Netgear-Asus litigation - now that the article is published, can't really un-ring the bell there...

sfx

[Assistant]
If I'm understanding this correctly, the FCC just increased the allowable power in the U-NII-1 band: http://www.fcc.gov/document/5-ghz-u-nii-ro

Why don't the router companies just give user access to the full range of transmit power that the device supports on all channels. It should be perfectly fine as long as they put a warning. (just like when they allow you to select different regions (some allowing channels 1-14 to be used)

I really don't see the reason behind the 17dBm limit on certain 5GHz channels. the range is already so short (signal is also easily blocked) that even if they allowed 100 watts, it likely would not bother anything else.

From a logical standpoint, the 1 watt limit also makes no sense. (go over 1 watt and the FCC goes crazy, but 2 AP's pumping out 1 watt each is totally fine (not to mention that you can place the AP in just about any location, so what is the limit trying to protect?).
I say they should increase the limit to around 1100 watts. (they have no problem when microwaves use it) .

Everyone knows that the FCC regulations (and peers internationally) are necessary to allow unlicensed transmitters to coexist. Share the spectrum.
It's not a human tissue safety issue.

If too many people use excessive radiated power (i.e., inclusive of antenna gain), we all suffer.

Those here old enough to remember the 27MHz Citizens Band in its height of popularity know of what I speak. It was originally strictly licensed - not unlicensed. So that the FCC had recourse if people violated its max power which was 5W. But it became polluted with people buying/using illegal power amps. And when the propagation conditions were just so, one fool could jam a channel for hundreds or thousands of miles. On a lesser scale, we have that risk with 40MHz channels in 2.4GHz and "AMP'd" WiFi and all that rot.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How We Test Wireless Products - Revision 9

Our V9 wireless test process introduces new test clients and new ways of using them.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
This brings up a question that I've been wondering about...now that the FCC does allow the same power in the lower segment of 5GHz. channels as the upper segment of 5GHz. channels, do newer routers like the Netgear R7800 take advantage of that? Can older routers take advantage of this via new firmware, or only newer routers? Not sure if the firmware that you can flash has control over radio power or not?

Curious about this, since you mentioned it *smile*.

Great article on your testing methodology, by the way. Appreciate your sharing this.

Thanks!

RogerSC said:
now that the FCC does allow the same power in the lower segment of 5GHz. channels as the upper segment of 5GHz. channels, do newer routers like the Netgear R7800 take advantage of that? Can older routers take advantage of this via new firmware, or only newer routers? Not sure if the firmware that you can flash has control over radio power or not?

I don't know how programmable Qualcomm's chipsets are, but in the case of a Broadcom-based router, the router manufacturer should be able to reconfigure any available channel and output power levels by compiling a new CLM file. This contains a table with all that power configuration data, and can be either embedded in the wireless driver at compile time, or loaded externally at boot time.

This makes a lot of sense, as there are so few consumer devices that are capable of more than 2x2.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys WET610N Wireless vs. Wired speed

I purchased a WET610N with the hope that, as a dual band device, I could connect it to my 5G wireless network and get the same speeds I get for devices connected to the bridge with 10baseT. Thus far, it seems that's not the case.

Both 2.4G and 5G wireless networks are sourced by a Comcast modem. My wireless devices connected to the 2.4G Wifi network consistently test out at 10.6Mbps down and 5.7Mbps Up. My 5G wireless devices report 82Mbps down and 6.9Mbps up using the same test.

With my WET610N Bridge communicating on the 5G network, devices connected to it via 10BaseT report only 32.89 down and 6.08 up. Very disappointing.

I hope that someone out there can tell me if I'm doing something wrong, have the bridge improperly configured, or that I'm simply out of luck.

Harv

[Assistant]
Harv Smythe said:
With my WET610N Bridge communicating on the 5G network, devices connected to it via 10BaseT report only 32.89 down and 6.08 up. Very disappointing

For 10Base-T, those are good numbers...

I'm assuming you intended to suggest 100Base-T, and there the numbers are low...

FWIW - I've used the WET-600N, which is an earlier model, and that little test lasted 24 hours, and I took it back to Fry's in Seattle and swapped it out for a Buffalo WLI-TX4-AG300N device, which worked much better... after the project in Seattle closed out, I'm still using that device in my LAN here in San Diego...

It's out of production, and the ports are only 100Base-T, but it's still working well - the other issue with that device is that it doesn't support the UNII-3 bands due to it being developed in Japan, but it does support DFS in the UNII-2 band for 5GHz...

sfx2000 said:
For 10Base-T, those are good numbers...

I'm assuming you intended to suggest 100Base-T, and there the numbers are low...

FWIW - I've used the WET-600N, which is an earlier model, and that little test lasted 24 hours, and I took it back to Fry's in Seattle and swapped it out for a Buffalo WLI-TX4-AG300N device, which worked much better... after the project in Seattle closed out, I'm still using that device in my LAN here in San Diego...

It's out of production, and the ports are only 100Base-T, but it's still working well - the other issue with that device is that it doesn't support the UNII-3 bands due to it being developed in Japan, but it does support DFS in the UNII-2 band for 5GHz...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction on 10BaseT - Duh - I guess my age is showing. Also thanks for the info about the Buffalo device. Thankfully, I just got the system running as it should. As usual it was cockpit error, not an equipment problem. After carefully doing the setup - I forgot to disable my 2.4G wireless connection and enable my LAN adapter. Another Duh! Ooklah now reporting 68.7 down and 6.23 up which is what I get when wirelessly connected to the 5G network .

<I'm getting too old for this stuff>

Harv

Harv Smythe said:
<I'm getting too old for this stuff>

Sometimes I feed the same way - it's all good...

Happy to hear you got in sorted out.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Will Wi-Fi Make 5G LTE Irrelevant?

Wi-Fi may have a better shot than 5G LTE in the race to be the next mobile technology.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
thiggins said:
Wi-Fi may have a better shot than 5G LTE in the race to be the next mobile technology.

Read on SmallNetBuilder
Good job Tim! This was a well written account of the different views and possibilities that WiFi, LTE and 5G may take in the near future. Very informative - thank you.

thiggins said:
LTE

LTE is more than just a radio interface (the eUTRAN) - it's an architecture, which has always included WiFi (and CDMA/EVDO) as part of the Evolved Packet Core. Same for Wimax/802.16...

While the e-UTRAN was technically very strong, it was the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) that won the race...

"5G" is a marketing term, but where we're at - the 3GPP LTE-EPC is not just pushing higher speeds, it's expanding into things like the IoT arena (NB-IOT for one), and improved interconnectivity across different bearers...

It's a very interesting time for the telco's especially, as the EPC specs define interfaces, but they don't define implementation - and we see ATT and Verizon (along with others) migrating their cores into something more cloudlike similar to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft...

With LTE, you pretty much get a decent AND guarantee connection. So far WiFi feels like a best effort ( Whether it is designed like that or not )
Logging in still sucks, some AP are stuck with ADSL backbone. And in high populated area it is hugely congested and UX mostly sucks.

I am waiting to see if LTE-U, LAA, or MuLTEFire will be better.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys High Gain Antennas Reviewed

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32774-linksys-high-gain-antennas-reviewed
More than anything I can't grok how Linksys thinks anyone will spend >$100 on 4 antennas that probably cost them $5. Heck, looking on many an ecommerce website will turn up plenty of fairly reputable antenna manufacturers who charge less than half that.

Let alone the little known ones...that still have dozens to hundreds of feed back and make pretty decent antennas (considering that I have half a dozen of them laying around and tested extensively, I can vouch for that).

I will say that the far distance 5GHz improvement is more than I've ever seen out of an Omni. Then again, I've been generally swapping 3-5dBi antennas with 5-7dBi. I have seen similar behavior with 2.4GHz, there are just very tiny gains to be had, unless stepping up the gain SIGNIFICANTLY. It just seems like all you can really get is somewhat better range...which then again is what a lot are looking for.

Increased range on 5GHz is harder to get, but better performance tends to abound.

All of my ~2-3dBi increased gain antenna swaps typically have only netted at most 5% increased 2.4GHz performance and generally only at longer ranges (exception, my outdoors AP where moving from 5 to 7dBi seems to have increased performance at medium-far out to extreme ranges by a fair amount, about 8-12% in all locations and I can keep 10Mbps out about 20% further than before (which is around an increase of 50 feet)).

5GHz just seems to love bigger antennas, especially on ac routers, and pretty much any distance. All of my ac routers see around a 10% gain on the low end up to about 20% in transfer performance just my a nice modest 2-3dBi increase in antenna gain.

I haven't seen many 200+% increases though (though at extreme range I do see pretty big increases, but the performance is generally so crappy there, I'd never be using 5GHz. So going from an inconsistent 0-700Kb/s (IE transfer just stop for whole seconds at a time) up to about 0-2MB/sec, with transfers only periodically stopping for a second before resuming). I guess if you were to jump several more dB in gain it might make those kinds of locations actually viable for 5GHz, but by comparison I can get about 8.5MB/sec down, constant and smooth on 2.4GHz at that location....

[Assistant]
I would love to see him test some of the cheaper $5 "high gain" antennas.

Also, is it possible to remove some of the plastic casing to see the internals of the antenna?

I want to compare its build quality to a 5dBi gain antenna that I got from ebay ($1.50 for a pack of 2 and free shipping from China around 3 years ago ) (bought a bunch for some WiFi enabled IP cameras (they performed better than the stock antenna on the foscam IP cameras)

Pic uploaded to dropbox since imgur appears to be in the middle of a DDOS at the moment. https://dl.dropbox.com/s/v3d9ltbxj3qpkn3/Antenna.jpg?dl=0
sorry for potato quality. I used a flashlight aimed at a sheet of paper for lighting.

edit, yay imgur is working again

@Razor512 - that's pretty much correct...

One sees the helical - that's the high band, and the long rod is the low band...

And it's not so cut-and-dried with external antenna's other than what the vendor provides. Each antenna design, the engineer is trying to optimize the impedance match to the antenna for the radio in the AP - this goes into deep RF items like VSWR*, Beam Patterns, and other performance characteristics to make sure that the antenna is the most efficient design posssible - at least this is the mindset of the tier 1 OEM's...

So buying so called - "High Gain" - antennas from a third party can actually harm your performance, rather that help, as it will more often than not, be a mismatch from the OEM design, which may or may not be optimal to start with, depending on the skill of the OEM...

* VSWR (Voltage Standing Wave Ratio), is a measure of how efficiently radio-frequency power is transmitted from a power source, through a transmission line, into a load (for example, from a power amplifier through a transmission line, to an antenna).
FWIW - I've been in the industry for a very long time - but my early coursework in college was Analog RF on the EE track - how I ended up doing SW and Digital HLD, along with my current Networking stuff, well, we go where the career path takes us..


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How We Test Wireless Products - Revision 10

Our Revision 10 wireless test process once again changes test clients

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
thiggins said:
Our Revision 10 wireless test process once again changes test clients

How does this test the client side?

Most of the concerns I've seen on the forums are not AP based, but clients themselves...

Huh? Like our previous processes, this process tests routers and APs.

thiggins said:
Huh? Like our previous processes, this process tests routers and APs.

That didn't come out right - is there a way to evaluate clients within the setup?

Wireless bridges, client adapters, etc...


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TP-LINK AC3150 Wireless MU-MIMO Gigabit Router Reviewed

TP-LINK's AC3150 Wireless MU-MIMO Gigabit Router provides no practical benefit over its less expensive AC2600 cousins.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Thanks for the review Tim. You're right the R7800 seems to be the router to stick with at this time.

Seems pretty cool, I wish all router makers would use the brightness of the status light that TP-Link uses (with the exception of that super bright one on the silver button on the top of the unit.

They need to work harder on supporting 3rd party firmware.

I wonder, are there any mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, etc.,) that support 1024 QAM?

Quick comment here...

from the article....

Maximum Wireless Throughput
<snip>
Note! The Veriwave does not support the 1024-QAM modulation required to reach maximum AC3100 / AC5300 link rates of 1000 Mbps in 2.4 GHz and 2167 Mbps in 5 GHz.. Our tests reflect maximum 4x4 link rates of 600 Mbps for 2.4 GHz and 1733 Mbps for 5 GHz.
Click to expand...

That's because 802.11ac in 2.4GHz is I_N_V_A_L_I_D - more importantly - QAM1024 is out of spec, even for 5GHz in 802.11ac.

Veriwave is conforming to 802.11 specs - 802.11ac modes are valid only for 5GHz... 64QAM for 802.11n in 2.4GHz, 512QAM for 802.11ac in 5GHz.

Revise your test plan - and scold the OEM's and Chipset vendors pumping out stuff that breaks things...


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: D-Link DIR-879 AC1900 EXO Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

D-Link's DIR-879 AC1900 EXO Wi-Fi Router is a "low-priced" router in a class that already has plenty.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
How come D-Link router's aren't getting any attention these days? They used to be the best 15 - 20 years ago.

Gianni, being the 'best' 15-20 years ago is like saying they were the 'best' dinosaurs. Even if they're still around.

Many reasons why they are not as good, today. Firmware, updated code (or lack thereof), gui and quality and quantity of updates (at least for security) to the firmware is high on that list.

Releasing models that don't push the envelope doesn't help either. No matter how inexpensive they may be.

And I thought that Linksys firmware sucked the most.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How To Buy A Wireless Router - 2017 Edition

Our 2017 guide to choosing a wireless router reflects the changing Wi-Fi landscape.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Thanks for your great article. I've been implementing a lot of eero's lately does Orbi have same coverage? Seems like from article it's backhaul is faster.

insomniac said:
Thanks for your great article. I've been implementing a lot of eero's lately does Orbi have same coverage? Seems like from article it's backhaul is faster.
I did not check the range limits of any of the mesh products tested.

Yes, Orbi's backhaul is faster. And the test results show it delivers higher throughput to clients as a result.

If you've been working with eero, you really should check out Orbi. It can do with router and one satellite what eero, et al. can't do with three nodes.

Nice summary of the recent wifi buzzwords.

One typo on the second page:

In reality, AD7200 routers are 4x4 AD2600 class routers with an 802.11ad radio tacked on.

I assume that should be "4x4 AC2600 class routers".


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: [Article] - MU-MIMO Retest: Six Routers Compared

Based on the SNB recent second review of MU-MIMO routers I want to cry not fair! Many people buy these routers based on the fact that they say they do MU-MIMO ..but from the second test results some will pass no traffic at all if one has several MU-MIMO devices? I do not think they should be allowed to sell them ..they are $200+routers..ie the EA7500. .how does one know firmware can fix it..I bet some need a hardware revision also?

Bless you for reviewing them. I punted and said I dont have any MU-MIMO devices ...I just need a router with good range and picked a router on top of your test results list.

[Assistant]
Someone gave me a new C2600, perhaps a firmware update will improve performance? Either way range should be better than my older Asus AC 66U, even if MuMimo is screwed.

Likely it'll be fixed via Driver/Firmware updates - hard to change silicon...

This is all very new stuff - and hella complicated...

RMinNJ said:
Bless you for reviewing them. I punted and said I dont have any MU-MIMO devices ...I just need a router with good range and picked a router on top of your test results list.

and not to mention smart connect , its not actually working as promised yet ether


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TP-Link AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Archer C5 V2 Reviewed

TP-LINK's AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Archer C5 V2 is a very different router than the original.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Can you turn Archer C5 V2's Ethernet flow controll off?

The measured WAN to LAN throughput is 919 Mbps. What happens when WAN to LAN traffic simultaneusly goes to 100 Mbps client and 1000 Mbps client?

ndrp said:
Can you turn Archer C5 V2's Ethernet flow controll off?
Not that I know of

ndrp said:
The measured WAN to LAN throughput is 919 Mbps. What happens when WAN to LAN traffic simultaneusly goes to 100 Mbps client and 1000 Mbps client?
I don't understand your question.

thiggins said:
Not that I know of

I don't understand your question.

If I connect 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps client to Archer does one get 800 Mbps and other 100 Mbps.

If I use a separate switch I get only 100 + 100 Mbps when slower client is downloading. If 100 Mbps client is to connected to Archer is gigabit connection limited to 100 Mbps?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: CES 2017 Wrapup: Wi-Fi At A Crossroads

2017 will be the year of Distributed Wi-Fi. Until it's not.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
2016 has been an interesting year...

Crystal Ball Stuff...

Improved BHR's - that's a known thing... they'll get bigger/uglier/more expensive, and people will buy them - they're the gamer laptops excess that we saw in that space over the last year...

MU - the 3D-TV of WiFi - bigger numbers on the box perhaps - but I do think that MU will find a place

And the advent of MESH - and quite a few startups - some more successful that others - eero comes to mind there...

We also have seen in 2016 the interest now in small wired only routers - the interest in the ER series from UBNT, along with the later entry with uTik's hEX - both are fairly capable there.

DIY routers - some are going down this path with x86 based boxes on pfSense and other distro's. I think Intel's caught on to the cheap QOTOM boxes and the numbers that many have observed and appreciated...

2016 was good - really good...

2017, I see some of the startups either getting bought-out or folding up - it's a battle there with known names and established shelf-space in the big-box arena. And the big names so far seem to be diving deep into the MESH/Multi-Point pool - I certainly hope eero succeeds here, as it's a good product...

Where 2017 gets interesting is the turn up of gigabit routing and N-Base-T - Broadcom has fired their first salvo with Asus and the new dead-spider AC5300 thingy (Quad-Core Cortex A53, upgraded switch, better radios), and Intel's taking initial steps into the pool with QNAP and their Router/GW platform for the BHR heavy-weight title...

I do see more cloud enablement - this time from the bigger players - google (ongoing push with their chromeos based devices), microsoft (yes, I expect them to jump in), apple (airports, not dead yet), and amazon (the alexa router) - whether this is add in, or they go all-in, but expect to see some interesting stuff there

For Carrier Provided Equipment - Arris and Netgear are going to be really strong going into 2017 - and from chipsets - Broadcom and QC-Atheros will face a running battle with Intel, who really wants to get into the space - and the gear here will get better - some posts here on Norton teaming up with Arris is just the first step - the big operators are deploying their own IOT services, and they need the end-point security there as well...

With the CPE realm - more on PLC and MOCA, as well as improved WiFi from them - and with SDN deployments, maybe even more flexibility on those platforms for end-users/customers, as this is a long standing issue that many inside also appreciate (as they are customers, too)

IOT will still be a mess - ranging from insecure to very, and google/amazon/apple, and I suspect facebook will jump into this arena - and perhaps forge partnerships with the major carriers...

With the carrier emphasis - and I see this increasing in 2017 (and beyond) with FCC fundamentally changing policies, the off-the-shelf market might suffer a bit - mainly due to some factors regulatory wise, and also some general market maturity (e.g. why some startups are going to go away).

I do expect a couple of big mergers (and a few small ones) this year in consumer space - some of the weaker hands will get gobbled up - the BHR market is fairly saturated - and the big fish can only grow now by eating the little guys... there will still be niches for startups, and these will be interesting to see..

sfx2000 said:
the BHR market is fairly saturated

Linksys and Asus recently entered a new phase to extend that market (one I expected them to enter sooner): new routers labeled as "gamer-optimized". Gaming gear tends to have really nice profit margins, even when it's half snake oil, half hype. I'd expect Netgear and D-Link to eventually join them.

Edit - I'm really happy that Intel is jumping into the pool...

Tender steps at first, with their ecosystem, but I think they have a lot to offer...

Good to have competition here...


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Apple AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) Reviewed

The wireless test results are posted in the Charts.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...11-2_4-ghz-dn-c/1198-apple-airport-extreme-ac

Routing and storage tests will be added soon.

Results in all four test rotation positions were closer than I have seen for other routers, meaning the antenna design is not directional at all.

Range seems a bit short in 5 GHz.

[Assistant]
It does have the highest amount of memory in consumer router, right?

So to me Apple hasn't been putting much attention into the software side of things.

I wonder if the OS of Router are developed by Broadcom with source where their clients, ( Apple, D-Link, ASUS , etc ) development there own additional functions and UI on it or is it all up to the clients to do it?

Since it has a Dual Core Cortex A9 i am wondering if it is actually running a mini iOS inside the router.

I read the review, now I'm left wondering why the throughput numbers are so low. At a distance of 30ft through two walls, I'm getting 45MB/s to my Drobo 5N using two of the new AEBS...one as a bridge and the other as the access point.

I'm also wondering if using AirPort Utility 5.6.1 has anything to do with it. That version of the software is not even designed to be used with the new AEBS. Only the new 6.3.x software on Lion/Mountain Lion and iOS 1.3.x software are meant to interact with the new hardware.

The Utility version used is the only Windows version posted. Should not make a difference in how the AExAC operates.

A "matched set" of routers should always produce best performance.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

TP-LINK's Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router is an AC2600 class MU-MIMO router with a side order of 60 GHz 802.11ad.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Hi Tim,

In the 802.11ad tests, you first started by copying a large file from a network share somewhere to the Acer TMP446-M-77QP laptop. The laptop has a single 500GB 7200RPM hard disk. At 100 MBps, there is a good chance that you are maxing out the write speed of the hard disk.

The 1GB files also might be too small to get the transmissions controls and window scaling in Windows's TCP stack to kick in. Wouldn't raw UDP steams from MEMORY on one device to MEMORY on another device (not hard disks) be a much better measurement?

Good point. The filecopy test was just a quick one and not the primary measurement. The Veriwave measurements were the primary test and they all pointed to a Gigabit limitation for any one connection.

just fyi for those wanting to know i believe tp link are working on an adapter to suit the AD7200


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Reviewed

Bought a TP-Link AC1750 (Archer C7) expecting there to be some turbulence (based on the information in the SNB review) since I'm running an Asus PCE-AC66 adapter on my main machine. Yikes. What a mess. Hours of tweaking (firmware, router settings, adapter settings, router positioning, cursing in at least two languages, etc.) would not produce a stable connection at 5GHZ (even with "ac" turned off). The TP-Link settings interface is archaic to say the least and the courteous but misguided support person who answered an email (with specific reference to the PCE-AC66 and various settings) was unable to provide more than general fluff in response. (She suggested I adjust channel width on the 5GHZ setting. This is not available in the current firmware).

(Please scroll down to latest update).

[Assistant]
Hi,
Wondering if it behaves at least on -N mode if you tried it?

Did try N only

As I mentioned in my original message, yes I tried N only (setting the 5GHZ to a/n - no ac). No good. Nothing on the 5GHZ side worked properly (with the PCE-AC66).

(Please scroll down to latest update).

Sorry you're having such a difficult time with the Archer C7. I bought one cuz it seemed like the best option for total throughput (wired and wireless) at less than $200. I bought one for $150 and was so pleased that I bought another when the price dropped to $120 to use as a wireless bridge to connect my basement with the main floor of my house on the 5Ghz AC band.

Check my detailed review on Amazon if you like to see the numbers. Some of them are substantially better than SNB's review.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1OD0A...e=UTF8&ASIN=B00CUD1KJK&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys WRT-1900ACS Reviewed

Is that a relabeled V2, or an entirely new model?

http://betanews.com/2015/10/07/linksys-linux-wrt1900acs-router-open-source/

[Assistant]
NVM, just saw that Tim also posted an article this morning about it.

Sounds like a new Device - faster processor perhaps - still AC1900 class (4*4:3) - if it follows the other WRT1900's (and WRT1200), should be a good performer..

It Looks like it has the same Marvell Armada 38X cpu and 512MB of ram as the v2 but it seems the cpu is clocked higher at 1.6 vs 1.3 on the v2 model.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys WRT3200ACM AC3200 MU-MIMO Gigabit Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

Linksys' WRT3200ACM AC3200 MU-MIMO Gigabit Wi-Fi Router is another example of a router with technology waiting for devices to catch up with it.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
It would be interesting to see a comparison between the WRT3200ACm and the WRT1900AC/S since as you mentioned in your review that the WRT32000ACm is an expensive 1900AC router.

The DFS feature would be nice to have, the price is perhaps bit high at the moment.

I've been using Total Simultaneous TCP/IP and UDP throughput as performance differentiators in the V4 process. The comparison charts of AC1900 class routers show the WRT3200ACM suprisingly low in the ranking. Table 2 above shows unidirectional throughput isn't particularly high either. I suspect this is due to the relatively high number of retries for the TCP/IP tests and packet loss for the UDP benchmarks.

The top-ranked had 23 total TCP/IP retries in the bi-directional test vs. 18,013 for the WRT3200ACM. Packet loss for the bi-directional UDP test was 50% down and 61% up for the Linksys vs. 0.01% for both directions for the D-Link.
Click to expand...

Looks like a SW/config issue inside the Linksys firmware with flow management and backpressure - Since the WRT3200 has a new switch asic compared to WRT1900, could be a simple tuning there...

Nice to see that the test case and platform caught this...

I was expecting more out of 160 MHz. Seems like a waste to use an entire UNI band just to get a 20-30% performance boost at best - and that's assuming you don't have any radar nearby that might kick you off at any time, with the issues that involves. People using more sensitive network applications (VoIP/gaming/streaming) might want to avoid using a DFS channel, unless they know there's in an area where they never get kicked by a radar.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Edimax RE11 Gemini AC1200 Dual-Band Home Wi-Fi Roaming Kit Reviewed

Edimax' Gemini RE11 AC1200 Dual-Band Home Wi-Fi Roaming Kit takes a different, and cheaper, approach to building a mesh wireless network.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Edimax said the product doesn't support band steering or load balancing among RE11Ses, nor does it support 802.11v, k and r.
Ugh, why won't any of the vendors support the standards that help roaming?

mactenchi said:
Ugh, why won't any of the vendors support the standards that help roaming?

Believe it or not - Common SSID's are the biggest step towards decent roaming performance - 11r/11k are the frosting and help out a bit...

Good article here about that -- http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basi...751-snb-answer-guy-how-many-ssids-is-too-many

sfx2000 said:
Believe it or not - Common SSID's are the biggest step towards decent roaming performance - 11r/11k are the frosting and help out a bit...

Good article here about that -- http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basi...751-snb-answer-guy-how-many-ssids-is-too-many
I've done that with my setup using two APs connected via powerline, but am waiting for someone to support 802.11k, v, and r before I upgrade.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: SPONSORED: Don't Get Caught In The Wireless Mesh

Most "mesh" Wi-Fi systems have a weakness you should know about.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Whatever happened to TDLS? This technology seems like it could really help, especially with mesh's backhaul limitations, yet I've seen nothing mentioned about TDLS in consumer-grade wireless for years.

Nullity said:
Whatever happened to TDLS? This technology seems like it could really help, especially with mesh's backhaul limitations, yet I've seen nothing mentioned about TDLS in consumer-grade wireless for years.

No strong industry consensus with TDLS - so we get things like WiFi Direct, Miracast, Apple Wireless Direct Link and so forth..

this maybe a sponsored blog post but its factual and to the point , as tim and others have found out even the best mesh system cant compete with orbi as the second best solution other than ethernet and access points

pete


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: [Article] - Is MU-MIMO Ready For Prime Time?

On the main site

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/32898-is-mu-mimo-ready-for-prime-time

I'm not surprised at the data/results - did the modeling some time back, and with current chipsets, 3 MU clients is likely the maximum, and there's other issues that still need some work.

Tim's testing with the new test bench confirms my suspicions...

MU has it's place, but there's a lot of heightened expectations that might be dashed...

[Assistant]
Wanted to thank Tim for doing these tests. Good to see what's going on with this technology that's been out there in theoretical form for quite a while. Real interesting.

Thanks!

Also, one thing that just came to mind here: mobile devices seem to be going for dual streams. My Nexus 5X and Nexus 9 are both 866 Mbps devices. Same with most 802.11ac-enabled laptops so far. Makes me wonder even more how useful MU-MIMO will actually be when the vast majority of clients will be dual, not single stream.

1. You need at least two MU-MIMO devices to get any benefit from MU-MIMO

Why? What happen if I have a One MU-MIMO devices and 1/2 Non MU-MIMO devices? Would the router just turns lowest common and uses SU-MIMO for all devices?

2. MU-MIMO works only for downlink data (moving from router to device). It provides no benefit for uplink

That is for 802.11ax. Which is stupid, we are having to incrementally buy upgrade sort of like every year. I also wonder do upload stops the downloads in 802.11ax ( i.e Half Duplex? )

I kind of expect if there are lots of client, MU-MIMO will improve throughput, turns out we dont get anything. But do latency improves?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Upgrade Your Router Or Add An Access Point? Here's How To Decide

SPONSORED - Here's how to decide when an adding an access point is better than upgrading your wireless router.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
the "SPONSORED" article fails to mention the need for structured ethernet cabling needs to be in place or installed to run standard access points

it is however the current best way to achieve better coverage up until now

once we see a dedicated 2156M wifi backbone things will change

atm we are seeing 70MB/s out of a 1733M dedicated wifi backbone ( orbi )

pete


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Luma Surround Wi-Fi System Reviewed

The Luma Surround Wi-Fi System has some growing up to do.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Great review. Have you looked into Open Mesh and UniFi AC ??

Looks very broken in terms of Wi-Fi performance. I really, really wish companies would stop shipping products with half baked firmwares...

whsbuss said:
Great review. Have you looked into Open Mesh and UniFi AC ??
No to both. Ubiquiti is in line before Open Mesh.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Plug Your Wi-Fi Holes With A Powerline Network

There's a better way to extend your wireless network than wireless extenders.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
nice write up , however i would suggest you mention the conditions and limitations of the hardware as its not the panacea for every situation

pete

I wish we would see more powerline adapters with Wifi built in. And for me personally, I'd like an outdoor model.
Earlier this year I needed to extend my wifi to the back yard. I was able to do so with an older d-link powerline adapter with an AP built in which is in my garage. The one box solution is great.

I'm rather disappointed that TrendNet doesn't have a system whereby their router would be Powerline enabled without additional accessories, and that the PowerLine adapters with Wi-Fi built-in could basically construct a Wi-Fi mesh on their own, where the Powerline Wi-Fi adapters would be synchronized with the primary AP / router. That would a) simplify setup; b) simplify management; c) avoid Wi-Fi for backhaul and the need to pull CAT5 / CAT6 for backhaul.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Article Discussion: How Many SSIDs Is Too Many?

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basi...751-snb-answer-guy-how-many-ssids-is-too-many

I have several reasons for using separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5GHz WLANs. I don't know how valid they are. My biggest fear is that the client will not always choose the right BSSID for the best performance. For example, it's quite common to have a situation where the signal strength of a 2.4GHz radio is stronger than the 5GHz radio at a distance, however the client will achieve a faster link rate with the 5GHz radio due to better 802.11ac modulation, wider channel, and all that, so using BSSID of the 5GHz radio should be preferred unless the latency is worse. But how will Windows 7 behave in this situation, or Linux, or iOS? I don't know and don't have time to test this, so I prefer to have different SSIDs, everyone connects to SSID with the 5GHz radio, unless the range is too long, resulting in slow speed or bad latency, or the client hardware is 2.4GHz only.

Another issue I have observed is that on one machine the 2.4GHz wireless performance drops sharply when I have a USB3 hub connected its expresscard USB3 adapter (probably unshilded). Again, I need to have a way to ensure that this client always uses the 5GHz WLAN. I am not sure and I haven't tested how would Windows or Linux behave under such circumstances.

PS: I hope that some time soon someone will also write an article explaining the channel selection decision when you operate multiple APs.

[Assistant]
It would be nice to know who SNB Answer Guy is.

With regards to the article, I disagree with using a single ssid by default. More headaches for the network administrator vs. separate ssid's and usually not fixable (device dependent).

This doesn't address the issue of sticky clients (or maybe it did and my reading comprehension sucks today), but that is the main reason I usually consider keeping multiple SSIDs.

It comes down to what I find more annoying... having to manually join a new AP when I walk from one area to the next, or having to reset the wifi on my device to force it to jump to the closer/stronger AP because with one SSID it sticks to the one it was just on instead.

L&LD said:
It would be nice to know who SNB Answer Guy is.

With regards to the article, I disagree with using a single ssid by default. More headaches for the network administrator vs. separate ssid's and usually not fixable (device dependent).

Network Admins know their network, and can always track errant AP's and/or Devices by the BSSID of the AP.

Easier to debug, not more difficult - just need to use the best tools for the task at hand.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Arris SBX-AC1200P SURFboard Wireless Network Extender with RipCurrent Reviewed

Arris' SBX-AC1200P SURFboard Wireless Network Extender with RipCurrent is a nice little powerline-connected Wi-Fi extender, but trapped in a G.hn world.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
One thing from your review that's missing and I'm somewhat curious about. Did you do any testing of the Arris and Comtrend products to see if they're compatible with each other? It would be interesting to know if g.hn is doing a better job if enforcing a standard than homeplug.

It interesting, but I think that the RipCurrent products need to be seen as a system solution, rather than individual components - and there it makes a lot of sense to be honest - this is different from the mesh solutions delivered by some startups and SOHO players.

And this tells the future perhaps - the RipCurrent Router at the moment is a customer owned device - but if you view this as a managed services device offered by the incumbent operator, it makes a lot more sense, considering Arris' expertise and experience in that market sector... and that's why they need to be seen as a whole-home solution, not as individual components.

SDN/NFV is getting ever closer to the home...

Consultants need to get up to speed here.

#greybeards

Nathaniel Sbar said:
One thing from your review that's missing and I'm somewhat curious about. Did you do any testing of the Arris and Comtrend products to see if they're compatible with each other? It would be interesting to know if g.hn is doing a better job if enforcing a standard than homeplug.
No I didn't. What HomePlug compatibility problems are you referring to?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Arris SBR-AC1900P SURFboard Wi-Fi Router with RipCurrent G.hn Technology Reviewed

Arris' SBR-AC1900P SURFboard Wi-Fi Router with RipCurrent G.hn Technology combines a conventional AC1900 class design with an underdog powerline networking technology.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
Looks more like a peanut to me...

Bottom antenna is odd, but they should've done a proper test to see which locations are the best for the antennas and sometimes those locations don't make 100% logical sense.

This tech is actually where I was hoping Ubiquiti was taking the direction of, with their new AmpliFi residential lineup...the G.hn seems like a good setup for satellite wireless APs to cover larger homes.

Thank you for the review! I'm glad to see more products with this idea on the market


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Amazon Puts Money Behind Luma

Amazon's backing could give Luma a big boost in its market share battle with eero.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
I've been following both the eero and Luma initiatives for a while, and the plethora of positive reviews of the eero led me to pre-order the Luma router multi-pack plus one for my three-level house with the Wi-Fi holes in the basement and master bedroom. They were half the price of the eero, and I figured the eero at least demonstrated that the home mesh networking proof of concept works. Luma has time to learn from eero's mistakes, if there are any, and the company looks like it's got some experienced and reputable tech leadership. This investment by Amazon gives me greater confidence in my decision. I have to wait until June to actually receive the product, and I'm sure there's something sketchy about them collecting people's money for so long and being somewhat cagey about the delivery times. I'm assuming they applied the funds toward product development or something, but that's pure speculation on my part. I'm in no rush, though. My current setup works OK for now.

Open Mesh - hardware/software meshing on 2.4GHz WiFi for access.
Been ar0und for some time now.
Supported by CloudTrax (cloud server based mesh management - multiple vendors)

I wonder how Open Mesh .com (not .org) is doing?

http://www.open-mesh.com/

i also have a pre-order waiting but this amazon partnership scares me. the amount of personal information these luma models collect in the hands of a company like amazon that for sure has an interest in the data. this is quite concerning from a security standpoint. these routers take screenshots of browser activity, and deploy more than normal tracking abilities compared to that of your ISP.

Am i the only one that thinks this is a bad idea to team up with amazon?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys Access Point Clustering Reviewed

Linksys' solution for managing groups of its business class access points is easy to use.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

[Assistant]
What does this mean?
"
3) All the APs in this table have Channel Management features, but only the Linksys and Edimax have Channel Management features within their controller solutions.
4) All the APs in this table have wireless Power Management features, but only the Edimax has Power Management features in their controller solution.
"

I have a unifi controller at home and I see both power and channel management options;

Cloud200 said:
What does this mean?
"
3) All the APs in this table have Channel Management features, but only the Linksys and Edimax have Channel Management features within their controller solutions.
4) All the APs in this table have wireless Power Management features, but only the Edimax has Power Management features in their controller solution.
"

I have a unifi controller at home and I see both power and channel management options;
Click to expand...

Thank you for your comment!

My observation in the review is intended to convey the following.
There are power and channel options in UniFi. With UniFi, you apply those options to each AP individually.
Edimax has the ability to tune managed AP's power settings as a whole, as well as to each AP individually.
Linksys and Edimax have the ability to tune channels for all the managed AP's as a whole, as well as to each AP individually.

Looks like a nice setup for a smallish business - quick question on the logging - I see they support SNMP (which is very nice perhaps depending on what they expose on their MIB), but I didn't see an option in the review for sending log output to syslog... was that missed?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Synology RT1900AC Router

Is there some one else interested in the Synology RT1900AC Router, cant wait to get my hands on it. Just LOVE the GUI on Synology products. Have someone seen this router in stores there you live, am in Sweden and not yeat in stores?

[Assistant]
Interested in an entry level (new) router from a NAS manufacturer? Because of the gui?

No.

L&LD said:
Interested in an entry level (new) router from a NAS manufacturer? Because of the gui?

No.

It would be interesting to see... lot depends on the HW and codebase obviously, but the NAS vendors know services, and they're pretty tight with ARMv5/v7, and most of them have deep experience with Marvell CPU's - and we know that Marvell solutions, while more spendy than Broadcomm, perform well on storage as well as routing and wireless.

Can they make the jump over to the Router/AP space and keep it affordable? Margins on Router/AP's are much tighter than NAS boxen - but over a product range, perhaps...

I think it's more of a biz decision, not a technology decision...

Feature-wise, this router seems to be hitting a couple of sweet spots.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys WRT1900AC AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

Use this thread for comments on the review.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...900ac-ac1900-dual-band-wireless-router-review

[Assistant]
well that review just made me so unsure what to do. Wasent a fan of the asus and my netgear has been solid for the most part but the lan to wan issues are annoying. But for a router that seems outperformed in every class the extra 50bux seems a waste. Decisions, Decisions.

hewligun said:
but the lan to wan issues are annoying.
What "issues" specifically?

Seems like a all around solid router. BUT. Its $50 over priced. I believe its actually $279.99 but its a limited promo right now. Can't believe they sent you 2! 1 is enough. And I still can't believe it. The feature set is so far behind other routers configuration wise. Still no FLIPPIN BANDWIDTH METER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That alone is inexcusable. The firmware better be good and stable. I don't see how they could screw it up considering how fisher price simplistic it is to use.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Bye Bye 40 MHz Mode in 2.4 GHz

Apple Airport Extreme Base Stations (and Time Capsules) at the latest firmware (V7.6.1) come OOB in "Use Wide Channels" mode.

You can't access the setting from "Airport Utility", you must use "Airport Utility 5.6", a separate download.

[Assistant]
Dunno

Doesn't seem to distinguish between them. Just sez:

Use Wide Channels
Wide channels provide higher throughput in your network, but might interfere with nearby networks.

It's under:
<Pick an Airport>
Manual Setup
Airport
Wireless
Wireless Network Options

I always disable it, I've never been asked about throughput problems, and I'm always fighting connectivity and interference problems.

I'll have to take a look at it for part 2. Thanks for the heads up.

I'll be extremely interested to know what it's actual behavior is in each mode. 8*)

Thanks!


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Smart Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

The Linksys EA8500 (AC2600) is due to be out on or around May 10th. It will be the third router to ship with Qualcomm-Atheros’ IPQ SoC. The first being the R7500 from Netgear and the E8350 from Linksys. Sadly both of those units mixed vendor chips with the Quantenna QSR1000 solution for the 5G radio, which was “MU-MIMO ready” yet still has yet to actually be MU-MIMO functional with firmware updates.

The EA8500 uses Qualcomm chips across the board and is out of the box MU-MIMO capable. SemiAccurate posted this article a few days about looking at the 802.11ac MU-MIMO solution from Qualcomm. It was an interesting read and does look at the EA8500 specifically. The only question I have regarding the QCA 5G Wave 2 solutions is offload processing. Quantenna’s solution has a 500Mhz dual-core offload, and Broadcom’s upcoming solutions (from what I have read) do as well. Does QCA’s just rely on the main SoC?

The EA8500 has been Wi-FI certified, and I have emailed Belkin (Linksys), but have not heard back as to if the unit comes with any traffic shaping capabilities (ie- QCA’s Streamboost).

[Assistant]
The slow processor speed won't be able to handle a VPN encryption/decryption and still make any good speed.

All 32-bit ARM cores suck at OpenVPN - it's OpenVPN's portable code that is the problem...

If I recall correctly, isn't Qualcomm-Atheros' IPQ Wave2 chipsets actually based on Qualcomm's Krait cores - if so, it's hella faster than ARM's Cortex-A9...

mediatrek said:
The Linksys EA8500 (AC2600) is due to be out on or around May 10th. It will be the third router to ship with Qualcomm-Atheros’ IPQ SoC. The first being the R7500 from Netgear and the E8350 from Linksys. Sadly both of those units mixed vendor chips with the Quantenna QSR1000 solution for the 5G radio, which was “MU-MIMO ready” yet still has yet to actually be MU-MIMO functional with firmware updates.

The EA8500 uses and is out of the box MU-MIMO capable. posted a few days about looking at the 802.11ac MU-MIMO solution from Qualcomm. It was an interesting read and does look at the EA8500 specifically. The only question I have regarding the QCA 5G Wave 2 solutions is offload processing. Quantenna’s solution has a 500Mhz dual-core offload, and Broadcom’s upcoming solutions (from what I have read) do as well. Does QCA’s just rely on the main SoC?

The EA8500 has been , and I have emailed Belkin (Linksys), but have not heard back as to if the unit comes with any traffic shaping capabilities (ie- QCA’s Streamboost).
Click to expand...
@mediatrek, I have the same issue with Quantenna for ASUS RT-AC87U, "MU-MIMO ready" is a open ended term, I have a contact at Quantenna and they are working on MU-MIMO as we speak, so hang tight all Quantenna will soon have MU-MIMO.
QCA although they miss the 802.11ac wave1 boat, they will be dominant for wave2 for sure. Having working on the QCA wave1 chipset and Broadcom, all I can say is the QCA wave2 chip is better IMHO, their offload processor architecture is well suit to handle gigabit traffic, more ever the chip runs much much cooler versus the others vendors in the wave2 space.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Buffalo WXR-1900DHP Gigabit Dual Band Wireless Router Reviewed

I found that ASUS' PCE-AC68 is used as test client only for Buffalo's WXR-1900DHP and Netgear's R7000 is used for other routers. Is there any reason?

[Assistant]
Sharp eyes, there, T.N.! Just a cut and paste error. We used the standard R7000 in bridge mode. I've updated the info and am correcting the screenshots. Thanks for catching the error.

Hi, I read your review and something popped out at me. The WAN to LAN throughput of the 1900 is quite a bit less than the 1750. Conventional wisdom would not guess this to be the case because the 1900 has a 1GHz processor which is faster than what the 1750 has. Yet that's what the review shows.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. Why would a newer, faster model have worse performance than its predecessor?

I was wondering if you still have the router on hand to test with. Could you redo the test with the latest firmware and see if the results are still the same?

If they are the same, this is a pretty bad mark against Buffalo's engineering staff. I really want to buy this router due to the built in torrent software, but am holding off because of the performance numbers shown in this review.

Edit: I have noticed that not only are your reported throughput numbers worse for recent Buffalo routers, but they are also worse for Linksys and ASUS. Routers from major vendors appear to be getting *worse* over time, not better. This despite having better hardware. There is either something wrong with your tests, or something severely wrong with the router industry.

buffalo7x said:
Hi, I read your review and something popped out at me. The WAN to LAN throughput of the 1900 is quite a bit less than the 1750. Conventional wisdom would not guess this to be the case because the 1900 has a 1GHz processor which is faster than what the 1750 has. Yet that's what the review shows.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. Why would a newer, faster model have worse performance than its predecessor?

I was wondering if you still have the router on hand to test with. Could you redo the test with the latest firmware and see if the results are still the same?

If they are the same, this is a pretty bad mark against Buffalo's engineering staff. I really want to buy this router due to the built in torrent software, but am holding off because of the performance numbers shown in this review.

Edit: I have noticed that not only are your reported throughput numbers worse for recent Buffalo routers, but they are also worse for Linksys and ASUS. Routers from major vendors appear to be getting *worse* over time, not better. This despite having better hardware. There is either something wrong with your tests, or something severely wrong with the router industry.
Click to expand...

Are you taking into account that the testing hardware and methods have changed over time?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Archer C7 v2 article error?

According to SNB Archer C7 v2 review (Table 1: Component summary), this router has an 8 MB Winbond flash memory.

However, other sites like OpenWrt and WikiDevi say that this router has a 16 MB Winbond flash memory, not 8 MB.

Is SNB article flawed or TP-Link has quietly changed the memory size after this revision launch?

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32498-tp-link-archer-c7-v2-reviewed
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/TP-LINK_Archer_C7_v2.x
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/tp-link/tp-link_archerc7ac1750_20

[Assistant]
davidcmc said:
Is SNB article flawed or TP-Link has quietly changed the memory size after this revision launch?

the v1 had 8M flash , the v2 has 16M as does the v3

but 8 or 16 isnt very much flash wise ether way

Article corrected. Thanks for pointing out the error.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Will A New AC Router Bring You Wi-Fi Joy?

So no comments on the article from the peanut gallery? No one want to comment on how poorly the AC88U did?

[Assistant]
Funnily enough I have just registered with the forum as a result of that article . The aim of the article was, I believe, to clarify whether the latest WiFi models were worthwhile upgrading to from AC1900 devices. All things being equal (5GHz is 5GHz no matter how many bands you have) it's hardly surprising that there was no benefit and with early drivers perhaps there is even a 'dis-benefit'.
As I think you have pointed out elsewhere in the forum, early adopters are nearly always disappointed.

One question I do have is could MU-MIMO have any benefit if used in a wireless bridge? I currently use 2* RT-AC66U (i.e. AC1750) to connect my office back to the house over 5GHz. The distance is about 10m. Link speed varies from 702-867Mbps and round trip latency is about 1.7ms

thiggins said:
So no comments on the article from the peanut gallery? No one want to comment on how poorly the AC88U did?
Thank you Tim. I am a new member, and I love to see these more scientific tests to assess hardware performance.
I see your point. I wished I've read your 2015 guide before I rushed to purchase a new router .
I am using the AC88U (got a combo through New Egg), and I am ecstatic about its performance, although
I might have gotten that from any other AC router though.

Still, will you be able to retest the AC88U with the new firmware (your test seems to be running with an older one)? It has the same components as the ASUS AC5300 (which you tested with the new firmware), so is strange to see the gap between the two.
Thanks!

Bodders said:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32896-will-a-new-ac-router-bring-you-wifi-joy

Thanks interesting read..

Tim you mentioned that the 5ghz lower and upper bands now use the same higher power allowed by the fcc in 2014 and all routers you tested reflect that change. That said are there any advantages to the lower or higher channels now that they transmit the same power levels ?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Starry, Starry Wifi?

Wondering what to think of today's announcement by Aereo founder of new internet access alternative called Starry (see https://starry.com/internet). Starry aims to be an ISP and hardware supplier, in the form of a new router. Starry says it will faster, cheaper, simpler, but than what? If feasible and off-the-ground, will be faster than upper tier fiber optic? Will the new, pricey Starry Station Router be competitive?

[Assistant]
cm frequencies.
Think outdoor equipment, $$, directional antennas at the home/business.
Think little/no building penetration, i.e., the above.
Think spotty coverage outdoors.
Ponder been-there-done-that: Metro-WiFi and Earthink some years back, even at 2.4GHz. And others: backhaul on cable TV cables and access points along pole-mounted cable, or on undergrounded TV coax with access at above-ground pedestals (CableTV owned.
Arrgh. Business model derails.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32937-so-whats-the-story-on-starry

stevech said:
Arrgh. Business model derails.

The business model for this type of service has always had challenges...

I do wish them the very best of luck...


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Re: Is $500 The New $300 For Routers?

Answer: no, just no.

Based on every review that I have read, these router companies are pushing their latest wares, with minor updates, and doubling their prices to boot. The market will quickly show that this is unacceptable and prices will fall in line.

I would also not buy any new router that did not support an open source firmware.

My current router works just fine, if I really want high speeds, it's called rj45.

[Assistant]
the costs are getting pretty high for what one gets...

AC1900 class seems to be the best bang for the buck at the moment, followed closely by the N300/N600 class (some amazing deals down there these days)

sfx2000 said:
AC1900 class seems to be the best bang for the buck at the moment, followed closely by the N300/N600 class (some amazing deals down there these days)
Agree, as outlined in my footer: the best value for money you get from these two routers!

Just What is happening to the NAS and Router Market is beyond me. But I think it is also this large sum of potential money that is driving the market. I am still hoping 802.11ax and the 60Ghz wireless tech would come faster.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Tenda Adds AC1900 Router

Hi All,
I was reading the article about the Tenda AC15 AC1900 router
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32810-tenda-adds-ac1900-router

On the FCC site, looking through the internal pictures, it looks like it has Broadcom BCM4708A0 CPU cores and BCM4360 radios, making it similar to the Asus RT-AC68U.
https://apps.fcc.gov/eas/GetApplicationAttachment.html?id=2719955

Any idea how a router like this might get prioritized for 3rd party firmware like Tomato?

The Tenda W1800/1R's similarity to the RT-AC66U at roughly 2/3 the price makes it appealing.

The AC15's similarity to the RT-AC68U at roughly half the price is even moreso.

[Assistant]
Appearances can be deceiving - but also suggests that AC1900 is pretty much mainstream these days.

Which is good news

Definitely good news!
These router speeds are so far in advance of ISP service (at least in the US), that it seems like overkill to spend so much.
Sub-$100 pricing for this kind of hardware is probably well within most people's comfort zone.

sfx2000 said:
Appearances can be deceiving - but also suggests that AC1900 is pretty much mainstream these days.

Which is good news

Less than $90 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9809649


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Article Discussion: Does Your Router Need An App?

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/32843-does-your-router-need-an-app

I realize that it's a sponsored article, but it raises a really good point - and from what I see in the article, Netgear has done a great job with their app.

We're in the post-PC world, and many folks might not even be able to run a desktop class browser to configure and set up a Router/AP, so having an App or a responsive webpage that scales correctly to a SmartPhone sized screen can be a real plus for potential customers..

Might be a good thing to include in device reviews - Netgear's App is very nice, and has some value add besides just configuring the router (WiFi scanner for example).

[Assistant]
Apps should die. I have no use for an underpowered, small display, always on (and on me) device that tracks me and needs about a million 'apps' to eventually do (at least 10x longer) what I can do with a computer in 5 seconds.

Yes, a 3 year old can now operate an ipad and keep themselves amused. But so can a monkey too.

Apps do not allow me easier, more or better control, rather the opposite. They narrowly define what I can and cannot do. And without signing in to download the specific 'app' needed, I lose that small benefit too.

Any manufacturer that bases their business on 'apps; is not on my recommended list for myself or my customers (ever).

The customers that ask me to help with issues with their 'app' are politely told to stop using them.

Apps? Biggest waste of time I have seen since the Pong TV game was introduced widely in the 1980's.

I got an apple airport extreme and the app for it works great. But then again airport has a very simple interface and does what i need. Rock solid also.

Sorry but I am able to run most websites in non-mobile mode on my phone's and tablets. No need for apps as long as the sites properly code. I have been testing out Continuum with Windows 10 on their phones and the phone docked into a full screen display is almost indistingishable from a real desktop when using their browser. I even tested out Asus's/ Merlin's firmware with it and everything seems to work just fine.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: NETGEAR R7500 Nighthawk X4 AC2350 Router

I have been trying to see if I could find online more information about the upcoming Netgear R7500. Luckily there was a Netgear digital home workshop event overseas and some folks attending posted information and photos here and here. The information on the R7500 is as follows based on the two postings (which have product photos btw):

Quad-stream
Supports MAC Time Machine
Beamforming+
MU-MIMO ready
Virtually the same casing design as the R7000, except with two antennas on the back, one antenna on the left and one antenna on the right side.
AC2350 (600 + 1750)
1.4Ghz dual-core processor (maybe a Qualcomm-Atheros IPQ8064 ??)
2 ports USB 3.0 and 1 eSATA (not on the back, but ports on the sides)
LED on/off switch on the back
Application & Device Aware Smart QoS (Qualcomm Streamboost???)
VPN Support
iTunes & DNLA Server support
MSRP $249

[Assistant]
I wonder if we're going to have a 4x4 MU-MIMO PCI-E adapter for that. The only way to get the benefits of that WiFi is to have another one of them in bridge mode.

theveterans said:
I wonder if we're going to have a 4x4 MU-MIMO PCI-E adapter for that. The only way to get the benefits of that WiFi is to have another one of them in bridge mode.

Having an adapter that supports MU-MIMO alone one should see an improvement. Yes to get the full performance possible one would want a 4T4R MU-MIMO adapter.

All I recall seeing beyond press releases and actually submitted to the FCC has been a 2x2 MU-MIMO for use in smartphones and tablets in the Qualcomm-Atheros QCNFA34AC (ID: PPD-QCNFA34AC). Nothing 4x4 MU-MIMO yet for a client adapter(s) have showed up to my knowledge..

mediatrek said:
Having an adapter that supports MU-MIMO alone one should see an improvement. Yes to get the full performance possible one would want a 4T4R MU-MIMO adapter..
A 4x4 MU-MIMO STA would be silly. The whole point of MU-MIMO is to get better bandwidth utilization with lower class clients.

A 4x4 client matched with a 4x4 AP would use normal beamforming.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Google OnHub Announced & Reviewed

Looks like Google is entering the Wireless Networking game in partnership with TP-Link.

https://on.google.com/hub/
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...6-google-thinks-we-need-another-ac1900-router
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...6-google-thinks-we-need-another-ac1900-router

It has lots of antennas inside. I wonder if their "improved Wi-Fi experience" is just from the device being outside a cabinet vs inside. /s

Do you think it will be successful, or will this be another small-scale google product?

[Assistant]
Ya never know. Cute commercial

They're going for the Smart Home hub market too with built in Bluetooth and Zigbee radios.

It has a built-in speaker, which you'd think could be used as a Bluetooth-enabled speaker. But the specs say it's just for audio-based setup with Android devices.

Also interesting is a 1x1 AC "Auxiliary wireless".

Looks kinda cool to me. I think the device-prioritization feature could be useful.

Also interesting is a 1x1 AC "Auxiliary wireless".

Is that the "congestion sensing" antenna?

SamS said:
Is that the "congestion sensing" antenna?
Apparently so. THAT would be an innovation, depending on what they do with it.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How To Crack WPA / WPA2

Wireless networks secured by WPA / WPA2 can be cracked. But it's not as easy as cracking WEP. [article link]

[Assistant]
WEP crackin:easy...WPA its solid. how is it done?

im a newbie to this hackin lark really. its them live help vids that got me successful at the WEP crack. with the permition of my neighbour, i had a go of there WEP network and succeeded. Now im tryna do the dreaded WPA network and i cant seem to get it off the ground. i cant even get the 'handshake' thing. Does that only happen when the user is logging on or can it work if there online, period? or doesnt it matter? and how do i know in the program kismet/airodump that they are; going online/online already/not online? ive tried doin the dictionary thing aswell by puttin a text file in root directory called dictionary, filled it up with 5,200 words, one word per start line, used it in the commands and it just says: 'no such directory'. Its doin me nut in! what am i doin wrong? email me @ ash_lee_g@hotmail.com or reply to this thread if u can help. thanx alot...

Ash-Lee

Set up a network of your own and play around with the tools. A hour or two to familiarize yourself will help you understand what's going on in the background.

The original handshake will happen when one of the users connect to the wifi network (typically, when he start his computer or after a connection loss).

You can check if you captured an handshake by going in wireshark opening the dump files and using the filter eapol.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How We Test Wireless Travel Routers

I'm starting this thread since I couldn't find it and wanted to comment on this post:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/32361-how-we-test-wireless-travel-routers

I appreciate needing separate criteria for testing travel routers and I think these are a good start. As someone however that uses travel routers regularly there are two criteria significantly missing from the wireless travel router test.

The two shortcomings are apparent in the D-Link DIR-510L Test here.

The two instances I most often use my travel router is when I need to repeat a weak wifi signal from outside the room I'm staying into the room in (often place in the window or just outside the door and when I need to transfer data between two devices in the same room.

For the first, range is extremely important. I need to pick up a weak signal and repeat it. In this scenario you could/should do a simplified version of your wireless extender test. Knowing the range of various travel routers (which in practice varies wildly) is really important.

For the second, wireless device to wireless device speed is very important. In the DIR-510L test you only test across the wired 100 Mbps LAN connection and comment that that is probably capping throughput. However, it's conceivable to 11AC devices could transfer data across the wireless bridge much faster.

In the case of the DIR510L the other important factor regarding extension is if you see a 50% throughput reduction. I just ordered one myself, but I'm hoping that I'll see full speed on 2.4Ghz backhaul and then full speed on 5Ghz extension.

Thanks for all the great data!

[Assistant]
jb510 said:
In the case of the DIR510L the other important factor regarding extension is if you see a 50% throughput reduction. I just ordered one myself, but I'm hoping that I'll see full speed on 2.4Ghz backhaul and then full speed on 5Ghz extension.

Just a quick comment - most hospitality networks are 2.4GHz on perhaps G54, many are still on B11... used to be that many hotels had ethernet, but in recent travels this is the exception rather than the norm...

Travel routers - like the single band ASUS WL-330NUL will act as a client to the WiFi provided, but they're basically repeaters, due to having only a single radio, so performance there will suffer on the WAN side.

It's still useful, don't get me wrong...

Even with some of the dual-band travel devices - performance is not a priority, access is..

sfx2000 said:
Just a quick comment - most hospitality networks are 2.4GHz on perhaps G54, many are still on B11... used to be that many hotels had ethernet, but in recent travels this is the exception rather than the norm...

Travel routers - like the single band ASUS WL-330NUL will act as a client to the WiFi provided, but they're basically repeaters, due to having only a single radio, so performance there will suffer on the WAN side.

It's still useful, don't get me wrong...

Even with some of the dual-band travel devices - performance is not a priority, access is..
Click to expand...

I find the same. Most hospitality networks are 2.4Ghz and 11g.

The request for the additional test data is born purely from experience of using a travel router almost daily for the last few years in hotels, guest houses, AirBNBs, cafes, coworking spaces and even at home.

The HooToo HT-TM01 was the first one I really liked. It was great until Chinese "TSA" confiscated while transiting in Beijing for it not having the MaH capacity printed on it (HooToo later started putting that data that on the exterior, but I had a very early model). I replaced it with an HT-TM03 which I used for about a year and really loved as well. Last week however it went missing (I lost it... somewhere) and while I'd replace it with an identical unit it sadly seems to have been discontinued (I think they'll have a new version out soon similar to the very recent TM04 > TM06 upgrade).

My personal needs are most often trying to get wifi that's 1Mbps and flaky inside the room stable inside the room. Putting a travel router in the window, outside the door, in the hallway, etc... I can often get a stable connection at double or triple what I would otherwise. I never really stay at proper hotels with professional built networks, where I stay all too often "we have wifi" means we have wifi in the community/public areas and maybe it reaches some of the rooms. It can also mean there is wifi in the living room, but it doesn't reach the bedrooms or backyard.

However, sometimes I do use it as an extender of a fast network, like when I'm home for a few weeks and don't get internet turned on, but with permission can use my neighbor's 50/5Mbps cable modem and 11n wifi that almost reaches me. The travel router out in the front yard does wonders! ...or when Im home and do have internet turned on but want to extend my network into my own backyard. In both cases avoiding the single radio halving would be a great benefit, hence I just ordered a DIR-510L. While I wish it wasn't so much more expensive, I use it enough price isn't really a deterrent, and a little better performance means a lot to me.

Well, Tim Higgins has tried to provide a relative benchmark, but the travel router environment where many of these are used is very, erm, dynamic...

Most of the times these days, when I travel, I'll fire up the hotspot on my phone - seems to be better there...

Have had some awesome in-room connections over in Asia, but in the US, internet, while a selling point, is miserable at best...


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: what day is today? it's wifi's birthday

Pretty cool article... Just to share some thoughts...

802.11 - unified a number of wireless technologies on a common MAC that could integrate into 802 based LAN's...

802.11b - made wireless LAN technology accessible to many folks in a common, inter-operable specification

802.11a - OFDM in 5Ghz, and this was backported to 802.11g, which was huge...

802.11n - standardized MIMO, channel aggregation, frame aggregation, added many things - some good, some not so good (e.g. Wide Channels in 2.4GHz) - added enhancements like STBC's and LDPC's

802.11ac - cleaned up the 11n mess in some regards in 5GHz at least, removed greenfield modes - improving legacy support, much wider channels, standardized beamforming in Wave 1 - enabled additional features...

802.11, IMHO, is a huge contributor to overall global productivity and use...

Best wishes to the IEEE 802.11 WG and all their contributors...

[Assistant]
Here ya go, with all the OFDM sub-carriers, lol...

sfx2000 said:
802.11 - unified a number of wireless technologies on a common MAC that could integrate into 802 based LAN's...

And for what it's worth - going into Geezer mode...

Scott Gruby was a Mac developer on Eudora over at Qualcomm - same time I was there - Scott was also a Newton (early PDA) developer, and I was basically interested in wireless... this would be back in '96 or so - Scott wrote Eudora for Newton, and I inherited a MessagePad 130 with a Wavelan card - this is before I got involved with Qualcomm's IS-95 CDMA 2G effort...

WaveLAN at the time, it wasn't 802 standard at all... but seeing the power of getting email in the palm of ones hand, that convinced me that wireless, back in '96 was a career path worth choosing - so I jumped in with both feet...

Newton (Apple) was the means, but the Lucent WaveLAN was the end - and this was part of a joined effort with teh CDMA group to push IS99 data services (IS99 was asynch dialup) and IS-657 Packet Data - eventually this was collapsed into IS707 for 3G CDMA... while the developers at the low-level worked on IS707, I joined the PalmOS team that developed the Qualcomm PDQ, e.g. the clown-shoe, which was the first CDMA SmartPhone...

Anyways, over the past 20 years or so - I've been doing a lot of stuff... from the very early days, to exploring dead-ends (SDMA, UWB, Wimax, etc...), it's been a damn good run...

But 802.11 - I've always appreciated it, and this is a technology that all here can appreciate...

we all use it and appreciate it, its too bad some manufacturers dont properly implement it and the laws of different countries that restricts channels. Every new wifi standard released with higher prices.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TRENDnet Shipping AC1200 Access Point

The product introduced here had my interest for a few moments.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32816-trendnet-shipping-ac1200-access-point

The Controller Software feature that can manage multiple AP's centrally and without cloud connection (I think) is a big plus.

The biggest negative I find is that to upgrade the firmware, you need to connect on a wired connection (or you may brick the router). This seems like so 1990's to me (and what Asus does).

At the right price point and the right home or office layout, three or four of these may give the best overall performance for a medium number of users (30 to 50) vs. any single WiFi router available today. Of course, being limited to a two antennae and two stream design will downgrade the performance of any client with 3 antennae (or more), but judging by the RT-AC56U that I am familiar with (another (internal) two antennae and two stream design), the actual real world performance can still be substantial, if not enough for most users.

Will there be a review of at least a couple of these units and the software soon?

[Assistant]
You don't need to connect to a device to do an upgrade, you can roll the dice and do it wirelessly! I'll stick to updating with an Ethernet cable..

netwrks said:
You don't need to connect to a device to do an upgrade, you can roll the dice and do it wirelessly! I'll stick to updating with an Ethernet cable..

No, the point I think you're missing is that the very process of upgrading on the Asus routers make them much more robust during a firmware upgrade no matter how you load the firmware (wired or wireless).

This 'new' product is not even at that level yet, so that is a step backwards, imo.

netwrks said:
You don't need to connect to a device to do an upgrade, you can roll the dice and do it wirelessly! I'll stick to updating with an Ethernet cable..

A good design process today means that when firmware is updated, the firmware is copied entirely to the device before the upgrade begins. This means no dice roll, as the file is already there before the upgrade starts, preventing bricking, so it shouldn't matter whether you are upgrading from a wired network or a wireless one.

The controller management software sounds similar to the way Ubiquiti does their access points. Personally, I'd prefer an embedded WebUI with one of the APs serving as a virtual controller, but at $135, this is an acceptable compromise.

These Trendnets have a list price cheap enough to make me question how decent they are. The next cheapest AC access point that supports clustering are generally $100 more or more (Ubiquiti AC, xClaim Xi-3, Linksys LAPAC1750Pro, Zyxel and Engenius), and many of them are either lacking a feature or two because they aren't fully baked, or have limitations. At $135 each, I hope Tim reviews these; I would need a review before I buy any.