[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as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for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: Does An AC Router Improve N Device Performance?

Tim,

Article link:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...oes-an-ac-router-improve-n-device-performance

Thanks for this update on this topic.

When I was recommending these (Asus RT-AC66U's, RT-AC56U's and currently RT-AC86U's) routers to my customers, I would add a cautionary 'let's test to see if we see an improvement' fall back clause to my recommendation - precisely because of your original article!

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...-new-router-really-improve-performance-part-2

I'm glad to see that my recommendations were not without merit. With a router just being a specialized computer, I tend to buy the best I can within my wallets means. This has served well for the last few years.

Hope you enjoyed your crow dinner and thanks again for another well thought out and well written article once again.

[Assistant]
I'm still picking feathers out of my teeth...

I wish I could explain why AC routers have these effects. The RT-N66U / RT-AC66U difference in 2.4 GHz is particularly puzzling. Same processor and even same 2.4 GHz radio.

thiggins said:
I'm still picking feathers out of my teeth...

I wish I could explain why AC routers have these effects. The RT-N66U / RT-AC66U difference in 2.4 GHz is particularly puzzling. Same processor and even same 2.4 GHz radio.

Two other factors that can influence performance on top of the chip itself:

1) The PA used. No idea if it's the same for the two routers
2) The CLM profile Asus used when they compiled the driver. Here's an example of what kind of low-level configuration is involved in these CLM profiles:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/R.../release/src-rt-6.x/wl/clm/src/wlc_clm_data.c

Ultimately, this is what will configure the output power under specific scenarios. I have no idea if Asus used the same profile for both models. So the difference might possibly be coming from this profile rather than the fact it's an AC router.

There are a few additional, low-level settings configured by the CFE and the firmware related to power management. I have no idea how these interact with the whole setup.

I wonder if the wireless drivers in the router have anything to do with it.

From my experience with some 3rd party firmware, I have seen different drivers have very large impacts on the wifi performance.

For example, when testing different builds of DD-WRT for the R6300 v2, Some would function normally while others will have an issue where wifi will be running at around 300mbit/s of actual throughput, and then for a 2-3 seconds, jump to over 500mbit/s, and then drop back down to around 300mbit/s.

It also seems that some wifi routers will drop the connection rate for no reason while some of the newer ones will be less overzealous with dropping the connection rate. For example, an N300 client connected to a WNR3500L V2 will be more likely to drop the connection rate while doing a throughput benchmark than with the same client, connected to the R6300 V2 (at least when using my Atheros AR5B97 wifi adapter

I still have no idea why it happens but even when close, when your wifi client is connected to certain wifi routers, during a benchmark under ideal conditions, the connection just won't maintain the highest connection rate for the duration of a test.

Overall, it just seems that some newer routers are better able to hold a higher connection rate without being so quick to drop the rate.


[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: Port Confusion - How to Convert a Wireless Router into Access Point

In the article here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...onvert-a-wireless-router-into-an-access-point

It shows an image of the AP with a big box that says "DO NOT connect here" pointed at the WAN port.

I have an older NetGear WNR2000 which I was thinking of using as an AP, but in the manual it specifically says to connect the WAN port of the AP to the router's LAN port (see attachment). I would imagine I should follow the router's manual, but I'm curious why there's a difference - my guess is because the WNR2000 has a specific "AP mode". Are the instructions in the SNB article for routers which do not have a specific AP mode?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Yes, exactly...if there's an AP mode in the router, then you will be connecting to the WAN port of the AP. Otherwise, you'll need to connect to a LAN port. The only difference is that you lose one LAN port if there's no AP mode in the router (and the AP mode in the router makes it much easier to configure as an AP *smile*).

I've updated the article to make it clear that the instructions apply to routers that don't have a built-in AP feature.

RogerSC said:
Yes, exactly...if there's an AP mode in the router, then you will be connecting to the WAN port of the AP. Otherwise, you'll need to connect to a LAN port. The only difference is that you lose one LAN port if there's no AP mode in the router (and the AP mode in the router makes it much easier to configure as an AP *smile*).

Well, some routers with a specific AP mode can also do things like go out to internet time servers to synch their clock, where as most routers without an AP mode can't do that. That might be important to some people.

Same thing with getting firmware updates (IE AP mode, they can do that. Router with no AP mode tends to flail and think there is no internet).


[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-868L Wireless AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router Reviewed

Read the review of the DIR-868L and saw a mention of the signal being directional.

Which "side" of the router does the signal tend to be directional towards? Out the front (side with LEDs), out the back (side with the ports) or one of the other sides?

[Assistant]
Synomenon said:
Read the review of the DIR-868L and saw a mention of the signal being directional.

Which "side" of the router does the signal tend to be directional towards? Out the front (side with LEDs), out the back (side with the ports) or one of the other sides?
What I said was:
The upshot of this is that D-Link's unusual antenna arrangement is perhaps more directional than the cylindrical format might suggest—at least when the router and client are very close together.
The italicized part is important. I did not run tests in open air at normal operating distance to determine whether there is any directional effect in normal use.

Ah ok, should have read that more clearly. Thanks.

Just wanted to post an update. D-Link has released firmware v1.02 for the 868L which adds bridge-mode.

http://img547.imageshack.us/img547/9417/rke2.jpg


[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: MetaGeek Moves To Pay Model For New inSSIDer

Why don't they make the free version open source? I think it's an awesome idea.

[Assistant]
While $20 isn't a lot to pay - each little utility sure adds up... and it doesn't become worth it when you're just using it to optimize a home network and then you might not use it for the next few months.

20 is awful high with no spectrum and no capture. Not worth 20. I do agree on the open sourcing idea.

Bought it right after I read the announcement here on SNB


[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 Announces Performance Improved AC1750 Router

I was at Best Buy yesterday and saw in their overstock area the R6400 (FCC ID: PY315100300). It was “made in Vietnam,” and as the name suggests it supports up to 450Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band and 1300Mbps in the 5 GHz band.

There is no product page, support pages, or a press release on this product to be found anywhere on Netgear.com. As of this moment, I can only see that Best Buy and NewEgg.com are carrying the product. Product photos and details can be found on NewEgg for now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122786

[Assistant]
If (only) Best Buy carries it; not worth buying, ime.

L&LD said:
If (only) Best Buy carries it; not worth buying, ime.

I suspect it's just like Asus's RT-AC68R / RT-AC68P - just a specific SKU for retailers like BB.

Wasn't there a discussion a few weeks ago on how the R6400 was just a rebranded model (I forgot from which)?

RMerlin said:
I suspect it's just like Asus's RT-AC68R / RT-AC68P - just a specific SKU for retailers like BB.

Wasn't there a discussion a few weeks ago on how the R6400 was just a rebranded model (I forgot from which)?

I believe the discussion was about the R6700, and not the R6400.


[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: 5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed

I recently ran across the article (from late 2008) titled "5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed" at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-basics/30664-5-ways-to-fix-slow-80211n-speed.

The last piece of advice says to turn off channel bonding on 802.11n. Do the editors of this site (who seem to know what they are talking about) still recommend that advice? Or have things changed with routers and clients since the article was written?

(I see that some parts of the article were updated as late as January 2013, so the article hasn't been abandoned!)

Thanks.

David

[Assistant]
The advice is still valid. Note that the specific advice is that channel bonding can produce lower throughput under low signal conditions.

Why cant they make the routers automatically switch from channel bonding to just 20MHz when throughput is low (and not just if other AP's are detected in range)?

Probably out of concern that the client devices will have to reassociate, reauthenticate, etc., and this could cause flapping and thrashing.


[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: Xclaim Xi-3 with CloudManager Reviewed

Well, I did not read the whole article, just browsed enough to confirm the product needs you to configure it over the 'cloud'.

That is enough for me to never recommend this product for anyone at any level. Regardless of how well it works.

The few points I did see (one week limits of logs, etc.) were not encouraging either. But that is the least of my worries of such offerings.

I hope they don't sell even one of these units and manufacturers finally let it sink in that 'cloud' is the same as 'insecure', 'captive' and clearly unneeded and unwanted in this and almost any (hardware) field.

Others may feel differently. But when I buy a device that simultaneously is granting access to my digital resources (or those of my customers) and also is required to secure those same assets, having the control of the devices that do the securing be available to any and all (hackers and berserk company employees) on the internet is not my idea of sanity.

Not to mention what a pile of paperweights they will become when (not if) the company, service or lifespan as determined at the sole discretion of the current or future owners of the company decides that their servers won't respond to Xi-3 hardware anymore.

I want a device that I own and can run as long as it is physically capable of doing so. I don't want to be led down a path of nickel and diming me into unlimited and un-ending future payments of each and every little thing I need to do in today's world. And I most certainly do not want to rely on the future viability of any and every company I do business with (nor gamble that the next company that acquires them will be compassionate for their previous customers either).

I can be persuaded to buy the most expensive product in any area we care to discuss.

But I refuse to be handed a noose and led to believe that putting it around my own neck is for my own good.

[Assistant]
Xclaim APs can be configured and managed via the Harmony app. No cloud involved.

I agree with this review totally. I had this AP and found that a lot of mid level to some basic features to be missing in the roll out of cloud manager. The main feature what closed the deal for me was roaming and radio adjustments. If I can setup a multi AP network to allow good roaming this isn't the AP a business could use. I ended up returning the APs and giving the feedback to Xclaim telling them why. As I said many of times to them I don't want to pay them for a public beta of their equipment.

I am glad to see this fair review of their product and to see I wasn't to only one to see about the same views as it stands at this point.

I did get one of these and the performance was ok, however , I do agree that both Harmony and CM were very lacking and even small biz owners would agree that options are lacking. A salon owner wanted more client details and tracking to make sure their clients weren't doing anything bad or wanted to be able to control them more. A restaurant owner wanted to ensure that some handhelds weren't having a buncha network errors and screwups so they didn't have to get the unresponsive handheld vendor involved. There's just so many things missing from these that are even present in consumer based routers that are the same price range. Other than having PoE and VLANs, these really lack compared to household APs.


[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 C9 Reviewed

Hey guys,

I wonder if you are sure of your methods of testing USB speeds. I have this device in front of me and i just tested USB 2.0 and 3.0 NTFS speeds. Your results / My results:
USB 2.0
NTFS Write (MBytes/s) 17.2 / 13.58
NTFS Read (MBytes/s) 23.9 / 28.32
USB 3.0
NTFS Write (MBytes/s) 17.5 / 29.61
NTFS Read (MBytes/s) 25.5 / 32.09

I have newer firmware i suppose but i can downgrade if you want. Also if you want performance on FAT32 i can do it.

This diffrences are rather big and your results are close on USB 2.0 and 3.0 maybe you used 2.0 device on 3.0 port? That might result in lower performance than me.

If you want i can deliver whole process of USB testing with screenshots and other needed specs to you for NTFS / FAT32.

(English is not my mother tongue, so forgive me any linguistic errors )

Best regards, Krzysiek.

[Assistant]
Our test method and devices used are described here. We use a USB 3.0 /eSATA dock with drive and move it from port to port.

We have found some products that don't properly recognize the drive as USB 3.0 or at all. Perhaps the Archer C9 is one of them.

At any rate, thanks for posting your results. No retest is planned.

Can anyone confirm if the C9 comes with a SPI firewall for the IPv6 connection? I have the C7 and the SPI firewall is only for the IPv4 side.

xeqw said:
Can anyone confirm if the C9 comes with a SPI firewall for the IPv6 connection? I have the C7 and the SPI firewall is only for the IPv4 side.
How do you know this?


[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 DSP-W215 mydlink Wi-Fi Smart Plug Reviewed

Can you get access to this remotely - from a work computer?

or do I have to be within a home on my network from a device?

[Assistant]
trek_520 said:
Can you get access to this remotely - from a work computer?

or do I have to be within a home on my network from a device?
please provide link to product description.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/othe...nk-dsp-w215-mydlink-wi-fi-smart-plug-reviewed

No Web UI or desktop apps - must use smartphone apps


[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: It Takes A Neighborhood To Fix Bad Wireless

It Takes A Neighborhood To Fix Bad Wireless
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...6-it-takes-a-neighborhood-to-fix-bad-wireless

PS: Which older version of inSSIDer are you using in the article? I don't like the new one that doesnt show both panes together below. Tell me the version and I'll try to find online or within my old HDD.

When Wireless Lans Collide - Co-operation not Collision.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...ollide-how-to-beat-the-wireless-crowd?start=4

LETS DO A PRACTICAL RUN OF DOING THIS.

I agree. Before it was fine, but not its atrocious. Especially, when i am living in a concrete high rise area with tons of new ones sprung up around without any proper band selection etc.

Few questions:

- I want to take this article as a reference and send everyone a communication that hey we need to work together on this

What I need for that:
- Who are the people and where are they located?

Is there some way using some Site Survey Apps and some walking around that I could possibly triangulate them? Or atleast get a general direction.
The more specific of a location I can get the better it is for me to FIND the RIGHT PERSON / APARTMENT that is broadcasting in a bad way.

- Which Router/ Bands etc are they using and what is the best way we could FINE TUNE them?

Part of it would be something I'll have to do after I find these people.
BUT.. If I can roughly identify their Routers, I could do some HOMEWORK before I contact them, and share some initial configuration options that could help the Neighborhood WiFi spectrum.

e.g.
I have these following signals around me as scanned by inSSIDer:

MY OWN:
Shanghai Dare Global Technologies Co. Ltd.
- WiFi by the default Router + ADSL Modem from my ISP
- WPA2-CCMP - Max Rate - 72N (Setup: G+N) - 20 Mhz - Was originally Auto 20/40

I have a ASUS RT-N16 with Tomato USB VPN that I just bought and is turned off for now.
Will be using it soon to manage my WiFi. Disable the WiFi on ISPs Modem/Router and use ASUS-Tomato exclusively.
Which is also why I want to set it up in the right fashion, but wont be done optimally without the neighborhood co-operation.

Buffalo Inc.
- Channel 1 - WEP - Max Rate - 11

Edmax Technology Co. Ltd.
- Channel 11 - WPA-TKIP - Max Rate - 18

Ruckus Wireless (9 Signals)
- 9 of them with hidden SSIDs - WPA2-CCMP - Max Rate - 11
- And heavily crowding these channels: 4 4 4 8 8 8 8 9 9
- Seriously what is wrong with these people? As if someone just wanted to screw up the entire WiFi Spectrum around the area. Some small business office? I don't know.

I did look them up but they dont seem to sell a Router as such? Do they sell / brand their Routers/ APs through some ISP?
Anyone got an idea which brand they sell under?

I need to LOCATE these guys.. Ruckus people and work with them to fix this.

They are seriously creating a RUCKUS!

EDIT:

Suddenly early in the morning around 7 am a new signal.. just showed up.

Its as if its STRONGER than my own ISPs Wifi inside my place.

Shanghai Dare Global Technologies Co. Ltd.
- WPA - Channel 1 + 5 Max Rate - 150N

Whats wierd is its SIGNAL is off the charts! In inSSIDer its signal varies from -95 DB to Off the chart! Where I cant even see its peak. Its amplitude peak just takes over.

I am attaching Images from inSSIDer: Crazy amount of interference from this new SIGNAL.
See the yellow signal. I have no idea where its coming from.. Gotta find it.
https://picasaweb.google.com/111313...&authkey=Gv1sRgCOTbg52n-t_gXg&feat=directlink

Any suggestions and guidance, more than welcome

[Assistant]
crashnburn said:
It Takes A Neighborhood To Fix Bad Wireless
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...6-it-takes-a-neighborhood-to-fix-bad-wireless

PS: Which older version of inSSIDer are you using in the article? I don't like the new one that doesnt show both panes together below. Tell me the version and I'll try to find online or within my old HDD.

<snip>
Click to expand...

This is why I love having all my wireless device(s) on the 802.11a (5GHz) band!

http://www.dare-tech.com/en_product.aspx?IndexID=7

That Shanghai AP is crazy...almost would make you think it is defective. Not sure anything could lock onto that seriously varying signal.

Wonder if the Ruckus AP's happen to have WPS enabled and use the same generic PIN as the Motorola Q1000!

Hi, I wrote the article on taking a neighborhood to fix bad wireless.

The laptop I used for inSSIDer is at home and I can check which version I had for you when I get back.

- Who are the people and where are they located?

My challenge was a little different than yours. In our neighborhood it's simply houses. By signal strength, walking around, a little guessing, and just talking to people I was able to determine most of them. There is also the GPS function within inSSIDer, whether it would work in your case is hard to tell, but you could give it a shot.

- Which Router/ Brands etc are they using and what is the best way we could FINE TUNE them?

The "vendor" column gives you some indication of brand, for example "Ruckus Wireless" is probably a product from here. The Shanghai device is probably one of these.

If you look more at the Ruckus site, you can see the mesh network (their words) of their devices. It's almost definitely a business using that as their wireless infrastructure. Which leads me to believe that you see much slower wireless during the day?

The bummer part is that channels 4 and 8 slightly overlap each other and they also overlap 1 and 11. By taking 4 and 8 they aren't leaving any other free channels and don't even have clear channels themselves. As a business they may not be open to your suggestions of changing to 1-6-11 without convincing them of overlap and how coordination is actually better for performance, you might show them how 4 and 8 overlap as part of your suggestion.

Can you attach the 2.4GHz channels map? If you can't find the source of 4-8 channels, or they refuse to get on to 1-6-11, it may actually be better for you to pick the less busy of the two 4 & 8 channels sadly enough. This may be a case where it's actually worth it to buy the WiSpy, or go 5GHz.

Does the neighborhood have City WiFi - Access points on streetlights or rooftops of cooperating businesses?
Or just a personal mesh.

Don't overreact to how many SSIDs you detect nor their signal strength. These are simply the WiFi 802.11 beacons. What matters if if the user of that SSID is occupying a LOT of air time transmitting. Most survey tools don't tell you this, "Channel utilzation duty cycle", 0 to 100%. Even if a neighbor streams video via WiF, and it is HD, you can simply choose a channel for your system to avoid that neighbor's WiF.


[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: When Wireless LANs Collide: How To Beat The Wireless Crowd

I recently moved to an Apartment and ran into major wireless connectivity issues. This article and another which I don't remember the name of helped me at analyze the wireless channels and at least get my ROKU to connect and most of the other wireless devices as well.

I would like to help my neighbors out by creating a "<Apt_Complex> Wireless Best Practices" (referred to as BP) document that the property management could email to all the residents and hand out to new residents.

The buildings are only 3 floors so my thought was to give each floor their own channel.

1st floor channel 1
2nd floor channel 6
3rd floor channel 11

My question is what about the 20/40 Mhz channel bonding.

Should the BP just say to use 20 Mhz or 40 Mhz?

I would also include in the BP to not hide SSID's.

Is there anything else that would be good to have in this Best Practices document?

Why isn't there something like this out on the net?

Any specific recommendations for 5 Ghz?

Thanks,
610Alpha

[Assistant]
Be sure you are ready for the midnight tech support calls.
And whiners.

It can be done... but really dependent on the approach taken...in my cul-de-sac, I presented it as a means for all to have better wifi, and backed it up with technical chops (I'm a recovering 802.xx/3GPP2/IETF standards engineer).

I did some site-surveys and geo-maps showing AP's/Channels, and coverage areas from the street - some were pretty surprised, and this was a challenge...

It's not about dictating terms/best practices, it was about engaging the neighbors and presenting a solid case on how to improve things for everyone...

To this end, we have a mailing list now, and we map around new AP's as needed, and engage them - but this isn't a condo/apartment dwelling, this is all single family homes, and we're all owners in residence... which makes it easier perhaps...

sfx

for 5 Ghz the range doesnt go beyond a few walls and there are many more non overlapping channels.


[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: Xclaim Wireless Xi-2 Dual-Band Indoor 2x2 802.11n Access Point Reviewed

Review is up
Xclaim Wireless Xi-2 Dual-Band Indoor 2x2 802.11n Access Point Reviewed

[Assistant]
Just read thru the review...

wow... so basically it's three year old tech at today's 11ac prices - and it's just at AP. 802.11n at that, two stream... electrically it seems very similar to the Apple Airport Express, and the AirPort Express is a bona-fide router as well as a pretty decent AP.

With an "Enterprise AP" Feature set that totally misses what home users are looking for, and expecting, at this price point.

Consider me underwhelmed - they could have done better here...

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I don't understand who Xclaim is being targeted to. If Ruckus is trying to go for home users than Asus (buggy as they are) would be a better choice. The SOHO or SMB crowd have better alternatives like Ubnt or even RouterBoard with a more mature product and equally competitive price range. Seriously removing the BeamFlex for whatever reasons is the deal killer, I was interested when they initially announced it but now I'm just meh.

kitsura said:
Long time lurker, first time poster.

I don't understand who Xclaim is being targeted to. If Ruckus is trying to go for home users than Asus (buggy as they are) would be a better choice. The SOHO or SMB crowd have better alternatives like Ubnt or even RouterBoard with a more mature product and equally competitive price range. Seriously removing the BeamFlex for whatever reasons is the deal killer, I was interested when they initially announced it but now I'm just meh.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this product doesn't really make sense for home users. The only real use in a home context is if you want easy multi ap management, in the case one AP does not provide full coverage.

Regarding SME, I use UBNT APs at the moment. I also have a Xi-2 and Xi-3 on order.

The benefit of the Xclaim stuff over UBNT is that it doesn't need the java app to provision, this is not a big issue for IT people (especially as it doesn't need to be on all the time). But using a phone app for provisioning should be a lot more straight forward for non techies (however Tim's review highlights its a bit clunky, and I will be looking at this closely myself).

Also in terms of pricing, the Xi-2 and Xi-3 are cheaper then their comparable UBNT APs. (Xi-1 is more expensive):

Xi-2: £118.80 - UniFi UAP PRO: £171.19
Xi-3: £158.40 - UniFi UAP AC: £227.71
(Xclaim prices from http://store.xclaimwireless.com/, UBNT from http://linitx.com/)

It would also be interesting to see how the Xclaim stuff handles in heavier usage scenarios. They are rated to handle 100 users per ap, I have heard that unifi can choke on higher user numbers, but I have never had very high usage per ap myself, so won't be able to compare.

It would be awesome if Tim could set up some sort of multi-user stress test, to run on APs. But I imagine this would be pretty hard to do. Talking of which www.wlanpros.com have published a stress test before, I would be interested if anyone else has come across anything similar elsewhere.


[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: Ruckus Announces Affordable AP Product Line

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...3-ruckus-announces-affordable-ap-product-line

These look really interesting. Ruckus is known for having some of the best resistance to interference and beamforming setups out there.

One thing I didn't notice in Ruckus' own sheets: whether the units can support SSIDs based on VLAN. The Xi-3 dual-frequency AP access point has a really good price of $199 though, which beats out the Cisco WAP371 and the Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC. It's rated to support four APs in cluster (the Cisco can do 6, I'm unsure on the Ubiquiti). The Ruckus and Cisco are 2x2, while the Ubiquiti is 3x3.

I've seen complaints regarding the range and performance of the Cisco model in their forums; I've seen the Ubiquiti rated here as mediocre. I hope Ruckus will provide Tim with an Xclaim Xi-3 for testing.

[Assistant]
Already requested review samples. Ruckus said they are not available yet.

Let me know if you see reviews on other sites...

Ruckus' key strength has been adaptive antenna's and RF ASIC's - it's beamforming, but it's not dependent on the 802.11 MAC layer primitives. It's built upon the older Video54 work, and has evolved from there.

Good stuff, and for the most part, compatible downsteam into 802.11 a/b/g as it's in the radio/analog domain.

Might be a challenge to test in a closed loop environment (e.g. inside a chamber) as opposed to free-space.

I very much look forward to seeing how their new devices work...

sfx

A couple of more existing Ruckus antenna porn shots..

Some of them are fairly elaborate as you can tell...


[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 WRT1200AC Dual-Band Gigabit Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

Use this thread to discuss the review.

[Assistant]
It's a beast on the LAN ain't it?

Thanks for including the board shots, pretty much what I expected... it's going to be a bit spendy for an AC1200 class router, but much of that is the higher BOM costs associated with the Marvell design (Discrete LAN Switch, Discrete Radios, etc...).

I would expect Linksys at some point to release a cost-reduced version 2 of the WRT1900ac... (FWIW, Fry's was offering them in the store here in San Diego for $200 last weekend , not refurb, new in box)

sfx2000 said:
It's a beast on the LAN ain't it?

Thanks for including the board shots, pretty much what I expected... it's going to be a bit spendy for an AC1200 class router, but much of that is the higher BOM costs associated with the Marvell design (Discrete LAN Switch, Discrete Radios, etc...).

I would expect Linksys at some point to release a cost-reduced version 2 of the WRT1900ac... (FWIW, Fry's was offering them in the store here in San Diego for $200 last weekend , not refurb, new in box)
Click to expand...

My comments from the other thread...

My guess is that it's the same or similar mainboard as the WRT1900ac - Armada XP clocked up a bit - double the RAM is good, as I've felt that the WRT1900ac was a bit short considering the rest of the design. I haven't seen anything that would confirm if there was a SO-DIMM slot, but I think this is unlikely. Space on the board is one thing, but so is the cost-adder of the socket and the SO-DIMM itself.

It is a cost reduced design, and the one thing I would expect is that the WiFi chip daughterboard will go away, and the WiFi baseband/MAC/RF sections would be on the main board - for a 2 stream design, it makes sense. Now whether the WiFi chipsets remain Marvell, or something else, that remains to be seen..

sfx2000 said:
I would expect Linksys at some point to release a cost-reduced version 2 of the WRT1900ac... (FWIW, Fry's was offering them in the store here in San Diego for $200 last weekend , not refurb, new in box)
I dunno. I don't think they are feeling any pricing pressure. Otherwise why introduce the MOST expensive AC1200 class router AND the most expensive AC1900 router (except for the ASUS RT-AC68P at $200 for Best Buy shoppers who don't know any 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: NETGEAR Suing ASUS For Wireless Hanky Panky

Hmmm.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...0-netgear-suing-asus-for-wireless-hanky-panky

[Assistant]
False advertising? Let's talk about Netgear advertising a router with a dual-core CPU and 256 MB of RAM, where only one core is enabled, and only 128 MB is also accessible by the FW.

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/R6250/R6250_DS_20Jun1374-73764.pdf

<cough>.

RMerlin said:
False advertising? Let's talk about Netgear advertising a router with a dual-core CPU and 256 MB of RAM, where only one core is enabled, and only 128 MB is also accessible by the FW.

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/R6250/R6250_DS_20Jun1374-73764.pdf

<cough>.
Click to expand...

So what's the other core/RAM used for? I know the 6250 gets better speeds for its USB clients but wow.
Edit: Found the forum link
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=11218

Anyways, I've actually heard this before from someone in the industry that their routers have higher power than typical FCC guidelines.

lol Merlin

all I know is I love my RT-N16, and even if it puts out more power than it should It doesn't interfere with any of the dozen or so gadgets around it lol.

btw I've been a long time follower of SNB, just got around to registering! and Tim you may remember me, I won the DIR-657 a couple years ago! I use it as an AP for the back of the house ATM.


[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: Work Starts On Bluetooth Mesh Standard

I sincerely hope that this goes the way of the dinosaur and Betamax.

Do not need more RF interference for the routers that actually accomplish something useful. BT is an airborne virus for my computing environments.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/smarthome/32631-work-starts-on-bluetooth-mesh-standard

[Assistant]
Bluetooth isn't going away anytime soon.

Mesh Bluetooth has already been around for about a year.

Looks like the BT sig is trying to get everyone under the same mesh tent.

They should have their own RF band then.

BT has been nothing but headaches for me with any of the devices I've tried it with.

A BT mesh would need Bluetooth class 1 to be practical, and there aren't many class 1 products.

And get that into some band other than 2.4GHz. But 2.4 is the only internationally available unlicensed band.


[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 R8000 Nighthawk X6 Review

Please post here for discussion related to both First Look and Part 2 reviews.

[Assistant]
NETGEAR told me the R8000 is using the new FCC rules for 5G Band-I. So Tx power has been maximized "as much as possible within FCC limits" (30 dBm total).
Does this mean the lower 5ghz channels are transmitting at the same power as the higher channels, and if so did your testing confirm that on the R8000?

Thanks for the review Tim! Everything you said was pretty much spot on. I feel it's a great router but the price point is what would hold me back from recommending this to a friend or anyone else. Looking forward to the R7500

Seems cool but I wonder why they would disable its ability to dynamically steer clients without adding an option to enable it.

I understand disabling it by default if it will improve compatibility, but it is just wrong to not even offer the option in the advanced wifi settings.

Netgear needs to come out with a new firmware update that adds more of the Xstream functions, and also allows you to adjust the transmit power of the radios.

For example, it should monitor for errors and then move clients to a different radio. Even in a home with all AC devices, this would be useful. for example, with my R7000, if my tablet gets within 2.5 feet or so of the router, the throughput drops until I turn down the routers transmit power. I would like to have more flexibility in how the 2 5GHz radios are used, for example If I do not have many devices, or all 802.11ac devices that can effectively be handled by 1 radio, then I may want to have the second radio set to run at like 100-200mw transmit power and then have it automatically steer my tablet to the low powered radio when I get too close to the router, and then push it back over to the high powered radio.

If I have a mixture of 802.11ac and N devices, then have both radios run at their normal transmit power, and then have all of the N devices on 1 radio and the AC devices on the other.

Overall the Xstream seems like it can be very useful, but it is just implemented poorly for now. (they should at least add a feature where it can detect incompatible devices and avoid steering them).

madmook said:
Does this mean the lower 5ghz channels are transmitting at the same power as the higher channels, and if so did your testing confirm that on the R8000?

From the RCC tests, the measured transmit power is pretty far below the 30dBm for the lower channels. Currently waiting for the FCC report on the upper channels, but I would hope that they are running much closer to the 30dBm for the upper channels.

https://fcc.io/PY3/14200264

Maximum Conducted Output
Power for 5GHz
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (VHT20): 25.99 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (VHT40): 25.19 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (VHT80): 17.85 dBm


[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 EX6100 AC750 WiFi Range Extender Reviewed

So I picked up one of these on sale recently for $69 CAD, which to me seemed worth the risk.. What I was really in the market for was a CHEAP 2.4/5Ghz AP that could does over 100Mbit.. Key thing to note is that the EX6100 has a Gigabit network port which makes AP/Routing speeds over 100Mbit possible unlike several other wall wart style AP capable extenders out there.

The current review only covers the device as an Extender, and doesn't really go on much about using it as an AP or router (it even has NAT support).. I would love to see it reviewed AS an AP so see what its peak performance is.

If anyone is interested I have been able to get around 80-90Mbit through it, I just have N class clients at this point, so I haven't been able to see how fast it can go in AP mode but it meets my goal of near 100Mbit so I am happy.

A few words of warning however:
- The setup wizards in AP mode are a little off as they contain a lot of "Extender" style wording.
- you CAN'T set both 2.4 and 5Ghz to the same SSID name
- Range is not great for 5Ghz but if you are like me you probably have a powerful router covering 2/3rds of your place already, this device is great for filling in a floor or a few rooms.
- there is no power adjustment so the 2.4Ghz overlap will be high, I have considered just disabling the 2.4 Ghz but I do get better speeds when my devices hop to it and are at the edge of my primary router so I just leave it on.

In my mind, being able to Set the same SSID (allow the devices to pic) and if the wizards for AP mode where cleaned up a bit I think this would be a great device... Well even in its current state and price it isn't a bad AP and you can afford to purchase two of them vs most other options in this performance range.

[Assistant]
Setting both 2.4 and 5ghz bands to same SSID is not a good idea IMHO. Client devices have a hard enough time jumping from a weak signal to a stronger one as it is when using an AP. Adding the complexity of 2 bands only creates issues that can easily be avoided by 2 separate SSID's.

As a note all of the newer Netgear Extenders (that by the way is what most people look to buy. Few understand what an AP is.) have an AP and bridge mode. Many have purchased second AC routers to use as an AP. Now they can save cash by buying one of these low cost AP devices.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Consultant

Tell people that an access point (AP) is built into their WiFi router.

To the OP: be sure to take into account that the net yield IP speeds are about 60% of the WiFi "speed" due to WiFi being half-duplex, having CSMA/CA, and other overhead.

Rare is 2.4GHz real world use case where the WiFi transfers exceed what a 100BT ethernet port provides.

IMO, gigabit WiFi router is mostly a marketing term.

A $25 gigE switch connecting LAN devices with a 100BT link to a WiFi router is an option if you don't want to pay a premium for a so-called gigabit WiFi router.

PC World in the UK currently has the Netgear EX6100 on half price sale.
Pretty good timing as I had just bought an ASUS RT-AC68U to be the center of my network.

The marketing stuff isn't totally clear on the full capabilities, so I took a gamble and got 2 of the EX6100. They are not perfect but they work better than I thought they would.

One I use as a bridge/repeater. Ethernet port links to 8 port switch that links to TV, Blueray, Wii and Slingbox. Repeater is used to feed a good signal to the Chromecast plugged into TV. I have it in Fastlane mode, 5G to router, 2.4G to devices. Works perfectly, good strong 2.4G output.

The other one I just use as a bridge. Ethernet port to PC in another room. Also in Fastlane mode, 5G to router, outgoing wifi disabled as I don't need another repeater.

Now the quirks.

1) The setup wizard is bugged. Every time I went thru it, the connection to router would fail authorization because it would try WPA2-TKIP even though I clearly put WPA2-AES. In the end I just went thru the wizard skipping as much as I could and did the manual setup. That worked ok.

2) It can't see DFS channels DOH! Had to disable DFS from the auto channel selection on the router.

3) It changes the MAC addresses to virtual MAC addresses. The first 3 parts are replaced with 02:0F:B5. Makes MAC filtering at the router a bit more difficult.

Did a speed test on the one connecting the PC, got 107Mb/s down and 6Mb/s up. That's the max speed I pay for.
EDIT: Just did a copy of a 7GB ISO, get transfer speed if 200-207Mb/s.

Overall i'm quite happy with them. Hope that was helpful.

Tim


[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 C8

I enjoyed reading the review on the C8. I'm a big TP-Link fan and currently own the C7. I'm really surprised and disappointed that the C8 requires NAT boost to be disabled to use bandwidth control, among other things. From the review testing, NAT boost makes a huge difference in routing performance. The C7 does not have the same issue and actually requires NAT acceleration being turned on (instead of off like the C8) for some features to work. I think TP-Link should have sticked to the QCA/Atheros designs.

It is really beyond my head why TP-Link would release a device with features requiring NAT being disabled for them to work, and in the process making such a big throughput sacrifice in routing performance.

I have a 400Mbps connection so from the review, with NAT boost off, the max it could handle was about 331 Mbps. So if I'd like to use bandwidth limiting for guest networks, I will not be able to fully utilize these 400Mbps since it won't be able to route at such a speed

Very, very disappointed

[Assistant]
microchip said:
It is really beyond my head why TP-Link would release a device with features requiring NAT being disabled for them to work, and in the process making such a big throughput sacrifice in routing performance.

I have a 400Mbps connection so from the review, with NAT boost off, the max it could handle was about 331 Mbps. So if I'd like to use bandwidth limiting for guest networks, I will not be able to fully utilize these 400Mbps since it won't be able to route at such a speed

Very, very disappointed
Click to expand...

Bold-face - shouldn't it say "NAT Boost [proprietary] being disabled" "

Where you say "wont be able to route at such as speed", do you mean 331 vs. 400Mbps raw WiFi bit rate (not net IP layer rate)? I'd think you're speaking about intra-LAN, presuming your ISP's WAN speed is quite a bit less than the net layer 3 yield of 400Mbps WiFi rate which would be about 250Mbps at best.
The C8 is what, $130?

stevech said:
Bold-face - shouldn't it say "NAT Boost [proprietary] being disabled" "

Where you say "wont be able to route at such as speed", do you mean 331 vs. 400Mbps raw WiFi bit rate (not net IP layer rate)? I'd think you're speaking about intra-LAN, presuming your ISP's WAN speed is quite a bit less than the net layer 3 yield of 400Mbps WiFi rate which would be about 250Mbps at best.
The C8 is what, $130?
Click to expand...

I am speaking about wired LAN speed, not WiFi. If with NAT Boost disabled it reduces the throughput by more than 50% on the LAN side, then if 400 Mbps come in from the WAN, it won't be able to process that much on the LAN and then to the wired devices. To be more clear, I'm talking about LAN -> WAN and WAN -> LAN. Not LAN -> LAN which is switched and I suspect the NAT issue is non-existent

A quote from the review by thiggins

Remember when I mentioned the NAT Boost's effect on throughput earlier? Table 5 shows that disabling NAT Boost (it's enabled by default), which is required to use Bandwidth Control, cuts throughput by more than 50%. However, 300 Mbps of both up and download throughput will be more than enough for plenty of users.

EDIT: looking at the table, it indeed affects WAN -> LAN and LAN -> WAN http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...ess-dual-band-gigabit-router-reviewed?start=3

This is just unacceptable and a huge blunder by TP-Link. QCA-based routers from them do not have this issue, and are faster anyways. I'm for now sticking to my C7 and will wait for a review by thiggins on the upcoming C9

NAT boost has no effect on LAN to LAN traffic, only traffic that passes through the NAT router.


[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: Ubiquiti UniFi AP-AC Reviewed

We're once again looking at doing wireless access points in the business and looking at the wireless charts there's a new AP on the list: Ubiquiti UniFi AP-AC. According to those charts this wireless device scores very well but there doesn't appear to be more info in either these forums or else where on this site.

Does anyone have any experience with these units? A bit of searching also indicates that they may not widely available yet.

[Assistant]
I've done several Unifi deployments and i've been happy with all of them. Just not particularly the Unifi-AC.

It seems to be that Ubiquiti is a lean and mean company. They seem to rely on a blog/forum of users for tech support. No tech support call-in. And perhaps no sales engineers.

The Uni-fi AC is currently unavailable ( http://store.netgate.com/Ubiquiti-UniFi-AC-80211ac-Single-Unit-US-Version-P1887C154.aspx ) they are taking preorders for them. You use the same utility to setup all Uni-fi devices my suggestion is buy one of the UAP units ( http://store.netgate.com/Ubiquiti-UniFi-Single-Unit-P1680C154.aspx ), and set it up as a test ( it's $70 the one you want is $300+ ) if you can do all the configuration you need on that then you are good for the expensive one. You might test the low end one I'd bet it does more than what you need already. I actually use the one in my house for HD streams to plex on multiple devices at once with no issues I abuse it pretty well and have yet to have an issue. We've also setup 8+ of these at a clients location and i've yet to ever have a phone call with a wireless issue.


[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: 2014 Edition

Hi:

"The 2.4 GHz band has 11 channels (in the U.S.), each of which is 20 MHz wide. If you do the math (or look at Figure1) you'll see that only three of them (Channels 1, 6 and 11) don't overlap. Channel overlap is bad, because it's another form of interference, which reduces your wireless LAN's speed and reliability."

Thanks for the article although I was confused on a few points. Considering the importance of using channel 1, 6, or 11:

1) I understand these channels don't overlap each other, but channel 1 will overlap with 2? So if I had a neighbor using channel 2 and I was on channel 1, I would still have a problem? So I am not sure how any one channel is better that the other?

2) I checked my router and noticed I could either select a channel or leave it on the default of Auto. In this case what does auto mean?

Thanks Bob

[Assistant]
Auto means the router picks a channel which it "thinks" is best.

There is no documentation available for most routers explaining how it makes the decision or how often if ever it reconsiders what channel to be on.

What is known is that some wireless devices get confused and lose their connection when the router changes channels.

Using channels 1, 6 and 11 yields three non-overlapping channels, the most you can get in 2.4 GHz.

The reason you don't want to use overlapping channels is that signals from overlapping channels look like noise. The more noise, the lower your performance.

CaptainSTX answered the auto question.

In countries allowing the higher ISM band upper band-edge, higher than permitted by the US FCC, one can fit 4 non-overlapping 802.11n channels, as the occupied bandwidth is about 18 MHz, rather than 20MHz. Of course, 802.11n can drop down to 802.11g modulation modes and thus widen to 20MHz.


[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: AC3200 Routers By July?

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32429-ac3200-routers-by-july

There is also this thread on the ASUS RT-AC3200.

[Assistant]
Has anyone announced a target release date for these products? I get the feeling that these are still months away.

RMerlin said:
Has anyone announced a target release date for these products? I get the feeling that these are still months away.
No release dates that I am aware of. I could find no reference to dates in any of the RT-AC3200 articles I have found.

thiggins said:
No release dates that I am aware of. I could find no reference to dates in any of the RT-AC3200 articles I have found.

Ok. My gut feeling (and also based on some inner knowledge) is that we will post likely see this autumn fill up shelves with AC2300 products. Give 3-6 months to the market to buy these, after which manufacturers will probably fill up shelves with AC3200 products.

At the rate manufacturers are pushing new flagship routers to the market, I wonder if we will finally see a change in overall pricing. 2 years after its release, the RT-AC66U still sells for 200$ CAD on average, with next to zero change in its price (tho that was a bit offset by the fact our dollar lost some value over the last year). Only the RT-N66U sitting underneath it has seen a 25% price drop after close to 30 months on the market.

It's getting awfully crowded in the 200-300$ price range.


[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: "Why High Power Routers Don't Improve Range"

Good points succinctly made. One of the things I love about SmallNetBuilder is how you effectively defuse marketing with facts.

So, if I understand you correctly, if I'm basically happy with my venerable (and no longer supported) D-Link DIR-625 router, except that I could benefit by faster throughput and fewer dropped connections, I should first try upgrading the router's antennas before considering a new router?

Or, in a larger sense, would it be correct to say that if you have a router that is up-to-date, standards-wise (i.e., 802.11n), you should only consider a new router if the new router has new features that you desire (like guest access, DLNA server, dual-band, etc.)?

[Assistant]
Please note that amplifying RF signals with an amplifier and/or optimized antennae on the receive path will increase the sensitivity of the receiver resulting in an overall enhancement of effective range for ALL devices on the network (only if you have amplification on both chains). Even if the small, low-power device isn't amplified, the amplified AP can effectively hear the smaller device from further away due to its superior receive sensitivity. Furthermore, in an infrastructure network, all client traffic goes through the AP, it can help extend the range of all client communication. As Tim explains, amplifying allows the AP to YELL louder, but it doesn't allow the other stations to YELL louder. However, an AP with equally as sensitive receiver can hear better (like a hearing aid) so at the end of the day, the devices can be further apart (increased range).

As such, overall range is increased with amplifiers, but one must determine that the actual product has amplifiers, and that receive sensitivity on the AP is similarly as boosted.

Here's a great PDF on understanding how receiver sensitivity affects Wi-Fi performance:
http://www.tropos.com/pdf/technology_briefs/tropos_techbrief_rx_sensitivity.pdf

Although it's a bit dated more for 11g and mesh type issues (economy rather than full range), the science remains the same. Page 3 specifically shows the issue with standard 15 dbm clients and how high-end, sensitive APs do show a net gain. Amplifying a receive antennae path increases sensitivity.

PS - I disclaim that I work for Buffalo Technology

To improve wireless coverage and reliability the first and cheapest method is to relocate the router. Second would be to add higher-gain antennas to the router / AP.

Directional

thiggins said:
To improve wireless coverage and reliability the first and cheapest method is to relocate the router. Second would be to add higher-gain antennas to the router / AP.

In my parents home, I have swapped out the antennas for higher gain antennas and was wondering what you mean by directional. Are you literally referring to the front of the router v. the back of the router as being the directional area (given that the posts are positioned as most would expect, vertically)? Or is there another way to determine direction? If I can increase directional stability by merely choosing which direction the router faces, I'd be thrilled to death. Also, the router is currently on the second floor with almost ALL of the connecting devices on the ground floor. Would the router respond better directionally if turned upside down?


[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 - Revison 8

Overall the change in process seems sounds and well thought out.

However, one thing I really don't like is that 2.4GHz 40MHz still isn't tested. I do understand a number of people can't or at least shouldn't run their routers with 2.4GHz set to 40MHz, however there are a LOT of people that CAN run it in 40MHz mode and a lot of other people who do, even if they shouldn't.

Its a shame that 40MHz testing isn't done on the routers too, as in my experience 2.4GHz 40MHz can vary wildly in performance from 20MHz mode, not simply you have a little over double the potential bandwidth, but I have seen some routers where 20MHz ran like a champ, but serious issues with 40MHz mode, or vice versa where 40MHz mode worked great, but there were odd inconsistencies and drop-offs in 20MHz mode.

It just seems like an odd inconsistency to not also throw up 40MHz numbers for 2.4GHz as there are a lot of users that will run the router that way.

[Assistant]
I always wondered about that boost in throughput, I noticed it a lot on wifi tests but it never seems to take place when doing a simple WAN to LAN benchmark.

For example here is a WAN to LAN benchmark (wired) using the throughput script set as described in the article.

http://i.imgur.com/N8y0UDO.jpg

But if wifi is benchmarked, especially with netgear routers, I get results like this

(AC1200 client connected to a netgear R7000 )
http://i.imgur.com/n3jHPgy.jpg

Razor512 said:
I always wondered about that boost in throughput, I noticed it a lot on wifi tests but it never seems to take place when doing a simple WAN to LAN benchmark.
It's an IxChariot quirk that has to do with packet aggregation.

You shouldn't see it if you benchmark wireless with something other than IxChariot, like jperf, for example.

azazel1024 said:
However, one thing I really don't like is that 2.4GHz 40MHz still isn't tested. I do understand a number of people can't or at least shouldn't run their routers with 2.4GHz set to 40MHz, however there are a LOT of people that CAN run it in 40MHz mode and a lot of other people who do, even if they shouldn't.
There are also a lot of people who don't use 3x3 clients and I don't show results for that either.


[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: Higher Power Now Allowed For 5 GHz Wi-Fi

FCC Increases 5GHz Spectrum for Wi-Fi
http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-increases-5ghz-spectrum-wi-fi-other-unlicensed-uses

Higher Power Now Allowed For 5 GHz Wi-Fi
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32435-higher-power-now-allowed-for-5-ghz-wi-fi

Does it mean that new generation of routers are near? maybe some of the present routers will be able to apply the new spectrum via firmware upgrade?

[Assistant]
Based on the changes, I'd expect at least a very small handful of routers to have new firmware and possibly some client end driver changes to.

Its an open ended question of how much of this is controlled in the router firmware (upgradable) or in the radio firmware (generally not upgradable). I know of at least a couple of routers where it is strictly on the radio firmware setting hard limits, so you wouldn't be able to update it.

As for new stuff, I'd be suprised if router manufacturers weren't taking it in to account now. Heck, might even be taken in to account with new revs of existing products.

Not to hijack this thread -- there's been a fair amount of discussion on this very topic here... lots of good info there

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=17710

sfx

FCC Recert needed

The problem isn't where the limits are baked in. It's that any router wanting to implement this change must be resubmitted to FCC for re-certification.

This ain't cheap and there is more $ to be made selling new stuff. So don't expect many (any?) routers to bump up the power.

Another issue that has been pointed out to me is that the new rule did not relax the restricted band requirement. So unless devices have been specifically designed to support higher transmit power levels at those frequencies, they may not be able to control spurious emissions to meet the restricted band requirements at the full 30 dBm.

Bottom line: expect to see higher power in Channels 36 - 48 in new producrs and no upgrades for existing APs / 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: NETGEAR Debuts AC3200 Nighthawk

according to Amazon Netgear R8000 has "Secure remote access to your home network via VPN"

does this mean this is the same feature Asus provides ?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KWHMR6G/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00KWHMR6G&linkCode=as2&tag=small0c-20&linkId=7QMDSVSPQTHCA4UF

[Assistant]
User manual NETGEAR provided to me (not posted yet) has a section on OpenVPN server. So, yes, same as ASUS.

thiggins said:
User manual NETGEAR provided to me (not posted yet) has a section on OpenVPN server. So, yes, same as ASUS.

Will be interesting to see if this will trickle down to existing products such as the R7000.

EDIT: Just saw the price. Yikes.

RMerlin said:
Will be interesting to see if this will trickle down to existing products such as the R7000.

EDIT: Just saw the price. Yikes.

Don't they charge by the antenna now *smile*?


[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: PowerCloud Systems Makes An Exit

Article: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32466-powercloud-systems-makes-an-exit

Opinion: This is of the many reasons to avoid cloud based devices such as the skydog router, dropcam, vuezone and other similar products, when things change or the service goes away, then your product suddenly becomes very useless.

Skydog has been around for a while, and there are likely many people that are likely 2/3rds of the way through the subscription, meaning once it runs out, they are stuck with a nearly useless router that offers little to no functionality.

When you rely on the cloud, you create many additional points of failure that are unnecessary in most cases.

[Assistant]
Razor512 said:
Article: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32466-powercloud-systems-makes-an-exit

Opinion: This is of the many reasons to avoid cloud based devices such as the skydog router, dropcam, vuezone and other similar products, when things change or the service goes away, then your product suddenly becomes very useless.

Skydog has been around for a while, and there are likely many people that are likely 2/3rds of the way through the subscription, meaning once it runs out, they are stuck with a nearly useless router that offers little to no functionality.

When you rely on the cloud, you create many additional points of failure that are unnecessary in most cases.
Click to expand...
A big cloud storage reservation of mine is security. In the US and elsewhere, they must reencrypt and store in order to have the keys to decrypt for a court order.
There have been several really bad faults in this, though they try to control who sees the keys. And they fuzz this up in the sales literature.
DropBox, OpenDrive, and others have had keys stolen/misused by ex-employees/consultants. Partly due to sloppy or naive controls on who sees the keys.
You can protect yourself by encrypting using your own means like TruCrypt or SafeHouse or Winzip. That kills the automated sync though.

But all that, and the low price of backup USB3 drives for my NAS, and the relatively low speed of my uplink to the Internet - it's just not worth it.

PogoPlug is an example, not of security issues, but of a bold attempt to sell Internet-connected drives in the home. Kind of a NAS via their servers. I see them focused on server-based storage now, so the original concept was perhaps too geeky for the retail world. To their credit, they're still in biz.

Razor512 said:
Article: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32466-powercloud-systems-makes-an-exit

Opinion: This is of the many reasons to avoid cloud based devices such as the skydog router, dropcam, vuezone and other similar products, when things change or the service goes away, then your product suddenly becomes very useless.

Skydog has been around for a while, and there are likely many people that are likely 2/3rds of the way through the subscription, meaning once it runs out, they are stuck with a nearly useless router that offers little to no functionality.

When you rely on the cloud, you create many additional points of failure that are unnecessary in most cases.
Click to expand...

Try convincing management of that when they see the dollars they can save short term.

fistv said:
Try convincing management of that when they see the dollars they can save short term.

Yep.

The resistance to cloud services is more than offset by the service agility and consumption cost.

The move to cloud-based is not something that can be "stopped" - it can only be "delayed" if that makes sense.


[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: MetaGeek inSSIDer Wi-Fi Helper Reviewed

Link to article: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32461-metageek-inssider-wi-fi-helper-reviewed

My opinion:

Seems overpriced for what it does, it essentially automated the shortest steps of finding the best wifi channel (while leaving the user to manually perform the longest steps), but an a largely ineffective way.
I have not used it yet but I can't find any info on it allows for automated testing between a wireless and wired endpoint in order to test each channel.

It seems to rely heavily on WAN performance which for much of the US at least, is far below the speed of most modern wifi networks, thus it will not be helpful for the user that wants to find the best channel to handle the streaming of raw bluray rips from a NAS or transfer lots of data or backup a wireless client to a NAS. At most it seems to only be able to tell you which channel will allow you to get the most out of your available WAN throughput.

It seems that a user would be better off with getting another system on the network and create a shared folder and then just copy over a large file for each wifi channel and see which one has the fastest copy time.

=-=-=-=-=-What it should do to be useful=-==-=-=-=-=-

Since they are charging a license fee that expires, they should really offer more. This product at least needs to have support for the UI's of most modern wifi routers where the user can simply enter in their user name and password in addition to either an auto scan or manual enter of the LAN IP of a wired system running the endpoint software. The wired system used to test the channels should then take control of the router and then automatically try all channels and automatically benchmark each channel by running a throughput test between the wireless client and wired endpoint.

(Since they want a license fee, that can fund regular updates to ensure compatibility with new routers so that the application can automatically log in and change settings).

[Assistant]
Thanks for sharing your opinion .
What are the alternatives for inSSIDer ?

I have not really seen any good alternatives. Inssider 2.0 is still free and works well.

As for finding the best channels, I do throughput tests on each channel.

for example when reporting an issue with the WNR3500L V2 (the router has a firmware issue (that spills over to the 3rd party firmware since they use lots of code taken directly from stock stuff and port it over unchanged

imgur album with screenshot of results for each channel: http://imgur.com/a/nx7sa

And because of that, in my area where there are now 160+ access points in range, it freaks out on some of the channels.

That test is the same that I do for all of my routers when determining the best channel to use for each location.

This entire process would be easier if the people who make the wifi radios would fully unlock them so that we may use them as a software defined radio, that way we can essentially have a good look at all of the noise in the frequency range and more visually select the best channel.

But for now, we need to benchmark them, and for even a low end 802.11n single band router, the wifi performance is higher than what is available on the average users internet connection.

The inssider wifi helper can do some of this, but only to the extent of the users internet connection speed. if the user has a 20mbit internet connection and a number of the channels are capable of running at more than 20mbit/s, then what ever channel it settles on may not be the optimal channel. The only way to be sure you are on the best channel is to have the wifi as the only bottleneck.


[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 WZR-1750DHP AirStation Extreme AC1750 Gigabit Dual Band Wireless Router

I just picked one up since it was $125 on sale since it had the new Broadcom dual core CPU and 512MB RAM. I updated to firmware 2.09 and it works okay for the most part, but I can't get port forwarding to work at all. I had to switch back to my RT-N66U for the time being until I can figure out what's wrong with the port forwarding.

Anyone else have this router yet?

[Assistant]
No problems if you switch to DD-WRT firmware (still on beta), destpite still as beta, while not perfect by far much better than stock firmware, you need to setup watchdog to reset the routr at least each week or each day if just upraded the firmware.

NAS functionaliy still incomplete as Transmission requires some manual configuration, and USB storage support ext3, and maybe fat32 (didnt test with fat32).

Aniway an ood product, with inmature firmware (as seems the new rule, to release routers with inmature firmware, as many otrher newone really sucks on firmware).


[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: Belkin - Linksys Deal Is Done

I read that the sale of Linksys to Belkin was finalized today.
I guess Cisco just couldn't get their usual giant gross margins out of Linksys.

Well, Belkin has, for years, done a good job of using quality designs. They don't have the consumer awareness and reputation though.

[Assistant]
stevech said:
I read that the sale of Linksys to Belkin was finalized today.
I guess Cisco just couldn't get their usual giant gross margins out of Linksys.

Well, Belkin has, for years, done a good job of using quality designs. They don't have the consumer awareness and reputation though.

There's nothing to worry about with the sale of Linksys to Belkin. I have used Belkin wireless products and always found them to be high quality and well supported including features that other manufacturers charged a lot more for or only made available in a specialized product.

Belkin high quality. LMAO!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

One of the most stable routers I've ever used is a Belkin N300. In fact my parents are still using it. 2nd only behind my Zyxel P-330W.


[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 EA6300 Advanced Multimedia AC1200 SMART Wi-Fi Wireless Router Reviewed

I just completed reading the EA6300 smart router review and found very informative. Last month I purchased this router to upgrade from a Linksys WRT54GL and found the EA6300 had less power out. Previously, I could log on to my router from my neighbors house and now the end of my driveway is the limit. Does anyone have the specification for radiated power for the 5 and 2.4 ranges?
Thanks,
Doug

[Assistant]
Could it also be due to the internal vs. external antennas?

I have no idea why manufacturers use internal antennas these days - I sincerely hope it's not for cosmetic reasons. I always prefer an external antenna and have the idea it propagates signals better. Way more metal.

I could be wrong, it could be that internal antenna designs are quite advanced, but still...

I first noticed this with wireless music players from the now-defunct Slim Devices. The old Squeezebox 2s had an external antenna and could pull in a signal much better than the Squeezebox 3s with internal antennas. That was a number of years ago and perhaps things have changed since then but the idea stuck with me.

Fraoch said:
Could it also be due to the internal vs. external antennas?
Possible, but unlikely. When was the last time you saw a cellphone with an external antenna?

Six internal antennas single-band antennas (3 per band) can perform better than three external dual-bands.

Could be due to different propagation characteristics due to the more complex N signals.

Try changing the router mode to G only and see what you get.

I just bought a Linksys/Cisco EA6300 (EA6400 inside case) with a price match for $117 CDN. It replaced a Netgear WNR3500 v2 that I am quite pleased with but I thought I would try out the EA6300 to see if it is an improvement. The Netgear with stock firmware was being used with a WRT54G v2.2running DDWRT as a repeater bridge and they worked well together. I am now using the Linksys EA6300 with stock firmware (the recent update version) with a Linksys E2000 (I recently bought used for $10) running DDWRT as a repeater bridge which works well too and is much faster than the Netgear and WRT54G setup I had been using. Consequently, I am keeping the EA6300 and saving the Netgear as a backup for it.

I also compared the contents of the EA6300 and EA6400 firmware update files and they are identical, no difference at all, which causes me to wonder if the EA6300 will actually be reduced in capability from that of the EA6400 with a future firmware update as it will be possible to just install the EA6400 firmware instead. If you want an EA6400, get the EA6300 with an EA6400 board in the case instead.


[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: Qualcomm Moving In On Wilocity

Saw this across my newsfeed this morning...

Wilocity and Qualcomm are talking - QC Ventures was an initial investor in them...

Qualcomm, independently, and along with QC/Atheros, they've done a fair amount of integration work in the past.

sfx

[Assistant]
sfx2000 said:
Saw this across my newsfeed this morning...

Wilocity and Qualcomm are talking - QC Ventures was an initial investor in them...

Qualcomm, independently, and along with QC/Atheros, they've done a fair amount of integration work in the past.

sfx
Click to expand...
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32411-qualcomm-moving-in-on-wilocity


[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: Huh? A Million WiGig Chipsets Shipped? (dated 23 JAN 2014)

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, but it is where the forum link at the bottom of the article took me. I just wanted to point out some nits I noticed about Huh? A Million WiGig Chipsets Shipped?

First, the article reads "The company, a developer of 60 GHz 802.11ad complaint wireless chipsets ...". While I find the idea of complaint wireless intriguing and perhaps long overdue, my guess is you probably meant compliant.

Second, when I try to follow the link near the top left for the tag "80211.ad", I am directed to a page containing only the text: This is an error.

Finally, as a completely unrelated side remark, 60 GHz??? What's up with that?? (This is why I noticed the 80211.ad tag doesn't work. )

-john

[Assistant]
Doing some google kung-fu... actually found a review of a shipping 11ad device... it's ad-hoc/peer to peer, and we all probably suspected, and the normal use case in any event for now...

Search for "Review Dell Wireless Dock D5000" -- there's a few...

sfx


[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 Available For Preorder

FYI: It's now available for pre-order (due out April 13):

http://store.linksys.com/Linksys-WR...productId158014980VVcatId553965VVviewprod.htm

[Assistant]
Love the looks. Unfortunately, I had a lot of issues in the past with Linksys routers, so I'm reluctant in getting one

can't wait for a review! expecting this to be the top ac1900 router

connorm said:
can't wait for a review! expecting this to be the top ac1900 router

Why?

I've read the claims...1.2Ghz Marvell CPU, 4 antennas (with only 3 actually working for TX/RX), eSata.

To me, the eSata port sounds most interesting, except I suspect you won't have native access to the port (lets hope I'm wrong). i.e. to read disk SMART data.

Plus its Linksys (Belkin). Do you really think that Linksys and Marvell have it in them?


[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 Goes Back To The Future For New AC1900 Router

Original article link: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/othe...goes-back-to-the-future-for-new-ac1900-router

I cant wait to see some storage benchmarks. Some modern SOC's offer great support and acceleration for SATA devices, for example the APM82181 being only 1GHz single core, can do 45-50MB/s write speeds, and 75-90MB/s read speeds on the WNDR4700 using the V1.0.0.52 firmware.

But the dual core 1GHz CPU on the R7000 struggles to do even half of that speed over USB 3.

If the new linksys router, makes use of an SOC that can provide proper acceleration for SATA, and the CPU speed is close to or better than that of the WNDR4700, then we may finally get a router that can finally max out a gigabit connection (at least for the read speeds)

[Assistant]
I was just planning on buying a R7000 and now this... Damn

300usd for what'll likely be a gimmick 4th antenna on a new AC router, with no word of 802.11r support; pass.

sorry, they've just been in this business for so long, i expect them to be pioneers in the field

I copied this from PCworld " it weighs in at a staggering 5 pounds" WOW. It doesn't look that big but weighs 3 times a R7000... What's with that weigh?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk


[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: Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router Reviewed

The Linksys E4200 showed up on Wifi Alliance's certification list. It's a simultaneous dual-band N wireless router with 2T3R for the 2.4GHz band and 3T3R for the 5GHz band. It would be interesting to see if the 3 pairs of transmitter/receiver can sustain bandwidth stable enough for 1080p streaming.

[Assistant]
The product is neither announced nor available yet. Might be announced next month at CES.

I doubt this is a three-stream product. Doesn't make much sense to have two stream in 2.4 and three stream in 5 GHz. But I've been wrong before.

Three stream N is even worse for wireless stability. The most reliable video streaming product I've seen is the net NETGEAR WNHD3004
NETGEAR WNHDB3004 3DHD Wireless Home Theater Networking Kit Review

According to Wifi Alliance's certification report, it is a 3T3R for 5GHz band. It makes sense; otherwise what's the differentiation from E3000?

http://certifications.wi-fi.org/pdf_certificate.php?cid=WFA9933

There are plenty of products with 3T3R chipsets that are only dual-stream.
3T3R doesn't necessarily denote three-stream.

Could just be a replacement model. We'll have to wait and see.


[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: N150 Wireless Travel Router Roundup

Original article at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32376-n150-wireless-travel-router-roundup

Very good roundup.

The article says the Edimax BR-6258nl cannot be used in Client mode. If you're not averse to plugging it into a USB port, it can be used as an Ethernet client and will simultaneously create a WiFi Hotspot!

FWIW, the older Edimax BR-6258n has 2 Ethernet ports that behave as 2 LAN ports or a LAN+WAN combo depending on the programmed mode.

[Assistant]
Could you provide a clarification?

Following up on your post, I looked at the instruction manual, the QIG, the product specification sheet and the included mini-CD again this morning.

Neither the CD nor the web site has USB drivers that would enable the "nl" to act as a Wireless USB adapter.

The QIG also clearly states that "The USB connector on this device transmits electrical power only. It does not transmit data...."

I plugged the device into my Windows 7 computer, and it didn't recognize the travel router as a USB device. Nor did it try to install drivers. The travel router did power up and operate, in this case, as a wired router, but it didn't show up as an installed network adapter in Control Panel.

I may have jumped to an unwarranted conclusion.

Supposedly the ASUS WL-330NUL is OEM'ed from Edimax and offers the drivers as a drive-letter mounted folder when the stick is plugged in. I assumed that the Edimax did the same thing but it does not.

The ASUS support page does not offer the drivers, so let me see if I can get one of the posters on another website to post the drivers from his ASUS device in a public location so that you could try that with the Edimax if you so choose.

Sorry about that!

Important to many of us, in a travel router, is the ability to use a USB cellular modem as the WAN. Or WiFi as WAN (travel router is a client of a hotel WiFi).

Mostly cellular. In my extensive domestic travels, I wound up using Verizon 4G/LTE in hotels because of WiFi access cost or crummy speeds.


[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 WNR2500 reviewed

Neat, this router is actually pretty impressive.

What took me by surprise is how well this thing does at long range. It almost matches the 2.4 GHz leader, the ASUS RT-N66U, yet it only costs half as much:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1238-netgear-wnr2500

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1238-netgear-wnr2500

If range is your utmost concern the router's lack of 5 GHz is a moot point because 5 GHz doesn't work as well as 2.4 GHz at long ranges anyway.

At short ranges the router's 10/100 ports obviously hold it back, but still...

The router's simultaneous throughput looked bad at first, but with the limited upload of Internet connections at least around here where 4, 3, 2 Mbps and even 512 Kbps are typical, you likely won't see much reduction in throughput if you're maxing out both downloading and uploading. Connections with 10 Mbps upload might not even be able to hit it.

Impressive given the price. I guess 802.11n still has some life left in it, and tweaks of older chipsets can still produce surprising results.

[Assistant]
They should have added gigabit ports. 100mbit ports cant be that much cheaper that it is worth crippling the router.

I would have loved if they could make a N450 version of the jnr3210

I use it as a second router (provides an extra access point)

it may not be a well known router from them and lacks 3rd party firmware, but it is extremely stable. (never ever had to reboot it outside of a firmware update)

Only thing that was annoying about it was the lights on the netgear logo that blinked with network activity and they were extremely bright (bright enough to be able to read a news paper with it being the only light source)

luckily it also has the option to disable the annoying lights.

It also supports USB soundcards for both sending and receiving audio, and it actually works (tried it with a cheap $2 USB soundcard from ebay, though I have not used the audio feature after those few initial test due to software limits. they did not add the function to create a wireless bridge so the device has to be wired to use the speaker function.

If it offered a wireless bridge feature, I would use it as a device to also make any pair of speakers into wireless ones, eg being able to use a tablet or smartphone as a remote and have the audio come from a my PC.

The range this router has is by far the best on the market at this price point. At least according to SmallNetBuilder. However I live in Europe and can't find it anywhere to buy. I couldn't get a single response on the topic from Netgear. Does anybody know whether this router will ever be sold in Europe? 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: AC1900 First Look: NETGEAR R7000 & ASUS RT-AC68U

Tim,

Thanks so much for posting your first-look review of the R7000 and RT-AC68U. I recently returned my AC66R b/c I wanted USB 3.0 connectivity for network backup of my MBL-NAS (since it does not have an attached USB). After reading your review I see the R7000 has a significant read/write advantage over the AC68U.

I just wonder how ASUS can address both the 2.4ghz and USB 3.0 deficiencies with just a f/w fix? Especially since you could not get a clean run with the 3.0 enabled in the GUI.

[Assistant]
whsbuss said:
I just wonder how ASUS can address both the 2.4ghz and USB 3.0 deficiencies with just a f/w fix? Especially since you could not get a clean run with the 3.0 enabled in the GUI.
I don't think I said that they could fix the USB 3.0 problem with firmware. I think that takes either a hardware fix (proper shielding). It's also possible that USB 3.0 will work with a different drive with other cabling. But it didn't pass with the same setup I use for other products and the one used for the R7000.

thiggins said:
I don't think I said that they could fix the USB 3.0 problem with firmware. I think that takes either a hardware fix (proper shielding). It's also possible that USB 3.0 will work with a different drive with other cabling. But it didn't pass with the same setup I use for other products and the one used for the R7000.

Yep makes sense. Sad b/c I like Asus and my recent netgear experience is less than stellar.

thiggins said:
Why are you even looking at AC1900 (vs. AC1200)?

For best wireless range today, and future AC devices. What AC1200 would you recommend? I need good 5ghz coverage for media streaming and 2.4ghz for my other connected devices.


[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 WNDR4700 CENTRIA Review

I finally read the review, impressive. Darn near an all-in-one device (router/nas/DLNA).

One thing I can't find is the DLNA specs. What media type (MKV, MP4, MP3, etc.) of media will it serve? Does it transcode on the fly, or straight stream (let the final device figure it out)?

I'm really impressed that it handles NTFS formatted drives so well (as stated, better than ext4).

I would really like to get my hands on one to experiment with.

[Assistant]
The ReadyShare features are the same as in previous WNDR series products. All it does is scan files so that it can serve up titles to devices that can't scan network shares and discover files for themselves.

Transcoding? Really? C'mon, not even many standalone NASes do that...

I wanted to make sure that it DOESN'T transcode. I can't remember which device I ran into that did, but what a NIGHTMARE.

My google-foo is weak today and can't find a good detail on the current readyshare features, like can you specify just one directory (and it subs) to be scanned for DLNA? Or are you stuck with it scanning the entire drive contents?

Also, IPv6 on the WNDR4700? Yes(good)/No(bad)?

Guz said:
My google-foo is weak today and can't find a good detail on the current readyshare features, like can you specify just one directory (and it subs) to be scanned for DLNA? Or are you stuck with it scanning the entire drive contents?
The WNDR3800 review covered the Genie firmware features. You can also download the WNDR4500 manual for feature details. The DLNA scan is for the whole drive

Guz said:
Also, IPv6 on the WNDR4700? Yes(good)/No(bad)?
I don't test IPv6. Same as other WNDRs. Modes are Auto Detect, Auto Config, 6to4 tunnel, Pass Through, Fixed, DHCP, PPPoE. The user manual is no help 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: Linksys WUMC710 Wireless-AC Wi-Fi 5GHz Universal Media Connector Bridge

I own a PS4, would purchasing this product from Linksys work with other AC compliant routers? I have a Dlink Gaming Router AC1300 with StreamBoost™ Technology DGL-5500. Would this setup work? I'm curious what other setups would work in this scenario.

[Assistant]
The product supports 802.11a/b/g/n and ac. So it should work with all routers.

Thank you Thiggins, just wanted to make sure it worked before ordering.