Couple of questions on latest routers

[ktrdsl23]

Newbie here with a few questions.

I'm looking to upgrade the wifi in my home. I live in a 6000 sq ft. (over 3 floors) house built about 5 years ago. My cable modem is in my basement with wired ethernet throughout the home. I probably have about 10 wireless and 8 wired clients connected at a given time. My current setup is an original Time Capsule at the modem location which feeds into a few gigabit switches and an Aiport Express and Extreme (each 3-4 years old) at two different locations which are in bridge mode as access points.

I'm looking to upgrade as it seems wireless technology has come a long way over the last year. I'm willing to go up to $300 or so which seems to offer many choices. I'm debating between the WRT 1900, Nighthawk 1900, Nighthawk 3200 and Asus 68u. I also could hold off a couple of months if needed to wait for any new products to come out. I'd happily save the $100 for some of the cheaper models however I'm certainly willing to spend the extra $100 if it means I'll be future proofed for a while.

I guess my main questions are:

1) Should I get the current latest technology and go with the Nighthawk 3200 or would people recommend something else?
2) Whatever I go with would I be better off locating it at the cable modem so the new router handles all network traffic and continue to use my other devices as access points if needed (obviously won't be ac) or should I leave my Time Capsule or Airport Extreme by the modem to do the routing and just use my new purchase as an access point at the most central location of my house?

Thanks for the help.

 

[abailey]

I would use your money on access points. Two access points if possible. Unless your internet speed is more than 100Mbit/s or you do a lot of filtering or VPN with your router, then your current router should be fine. I don't know how you have your wired devices connected, but I would put them on a switch and not hooked directly to the router (if you do not already have a switch).
I assume you mainly use the 2.4Ghz band. But if you want to try to start using wireless AC it can only be in the 5Ghz band, which has less range than the 2.4Ghz band, that is why I would concentrate on access points.

 

[KGB7]

Since you have lan connections through your house and I don't see that you mentioned the need for high bandwidth over WiFi.

Get two n66 routers from Asus and place them on different floors, plugged in to a Ethernet wall jack. Have them set up as APs, on 1st and 3rd floor. But don't put them in the basement, as WiFi routers naturally claustrophobic.

Future proofing is an outdated and missused word, because its very difficult to future proof, do to new tech comming out every year.

So buy what you need today at lower cost that will get the job done. And down the road you can always upgrade by buying a year old tech product at half the msrp price.

 

[remixedcat]

PFSense or Untangle box, managed L2/3 switches and some access points

 

[ktrdsl23]

Thanks for all the replies.

@KGB7 - How is getting two n66 and putting them on different floors different than what I have now? Are you saying that the n66 is much better than the Airport Express and Extreme that I'm currently using?

I thought I read somewhere that you need a faster router the more work it is doing (the more devices it needs to handle) and that is why I thought I might want to replace the router. From hearing the responses it sounds like my main goals should be in improving my range and coverage where I would see more benefits by adding access points (from my current 3 including my router) in areas where my coverage might be weak rather than getting new hardware.

I thought a problem I was having which I read about was that I had many different clients using different hardware (N, G, AC) and that hurts wifi speed and the new hardware did a better job of managing connections from different specs. Am I wrong about this?

Thanks again.

 

[azazel1024]

Faster router for more work, yes. However, unless it is a very old airport extreme acting as a router, it should handle any resonable SOHO setup just fine for routing duties.

Generally you need to look for a faster router for one of three reasons

1) You are running a VPN server on the router and you cannot max out your internet connection, which can be hard even with a modest connection as VPN takes a lot of processing power

2) You have a really fast internet connection and your router cannot keep up

3) You are running a lot of services on the router and/or the few services you are running, you need to be faster.

Examples are things like USB storage on the router and you want better performance, or you are running download server, print server, file storage server, VPN, etc on the router. Load it up and it is probably going to slow to a crawl. Faster server will be less of a crawl

If you are really just using it as a firewall, routing and DHCP, so long as it can keep up with your internet connection, there is often not much to be gained by getting a faster router. Generally consumer routers start buckling once you get more than about 20 or so total clients. Very dependent upon the router. The Airport Extreme tends to be better than the average, so even one a couple of years old should handle things fine.

Please note, when I say 20 clients, I do NOT mean wireless clients. I am speaking solely of routing, DHCP, etc. 20 clients connected through Wifi is likely to buckle most consumer home targeted access points. Whether it is a stand alone access point, or the access point built in to a router.

This of course can vary. My old Netgear 3500L, something like 5 years old (6?) handled my Verizon FIOS 75/35 connection fine. I switched up to a TP-Link WDR3600 and my speeds didn't change, but my latency DID change. It got lower. Not amazingly, only 2-3ms on average, but I did notice wired page loads got a lot faster, and wireless improved too (though the wired end of things was a lot better than the Netgear 3500L, so I expected that). I recently moved up to a brand new AC1750 router...I've noticed zero change in latency, bandwidth or anything else. I mean...the wireless is SCREAMING fast in comparison, but as just a router, I notice no difference (okay, the admin webpage is much snappier, but that doesn't impact general use).

So, within reason, there is "good enough" for routing and you might well be good enough for routing. Better access points for wireless though, that is often something you can improve upon and the NT66u are better than the Apple stuff, certainly in that respect (for WiFi). Newer hardware can only do so much to handle clients of different wireless generations. I would say, if you can possibly manage to, ditch the 11g stuff. That can significantly slow things down. There is a much larger impact in putting 11g gear on an 11n or 11ac WLAN than there is in putting 11n gear on an 11ac WLAN, at least as far as what kind of slow down the faster clients might see from the older generation of wireless gear.

 

[ktrdsl23]

Thanks azazel for the very informative response. My router is an original Time Capsule (2008) so it is probably on the bubble. My Airport Extreme is newer, maybe 2011 or 2012. It sounds like my best bet would be to get new access points to replace my Apple ones and move the Airport Extreme in place of the Time Capsule as a router. My clients might go over 20 (I forgot about a few home automation ones) so I'll have to count those up.

I think the only 802.11g device I have is my touchscreen thermostat which is used for zoning my HVAC system. It probably isn't all that important that it stays connected as I only use it to see the weather on the touchscreen. I'll try and figure out if I have anything else that is g.

I'll probably still lean towards one of the ac routers as a new access point and put it in the most central location. Call me crazy but for some reason I have an easier time spending $200 today than $100 today and another $100 in a year or two. Something about telling myself now that I want to upgrade and not feeling that I need to do it again in 12 months. I'm not saying it is logical and can see the potential poor purchasing decision but just something about my nature.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[azazel1024]

Sounds like a pretty logical plan. I'd play with disconnecting the 11g thermostat just to see if there is any impact. A device like that might have very minimal impact on your wifi network. It is more devices like, say using a PS3 or Xbox 360, which are 11g, to stream things where you are sucking huge gobs of bandwidth from 11n and 11ac devices.

Something like a thermostat, I would hope, is at most using just a few miliseconds per second, or even a few miliseconds per minute of airtime to grab/push data. So the imapct might be very small. Doesn't hurt to test.

In terms of clients, I am just throwing a rough number out there. It might handle a lot more possibly.

I've got roughly 15 clients wired or wireless on my network that are in the DHCP tables of my router and things are smooth as butter. You might be able to handle a significant amount more, and of those 15 odd clients, most aren't active on my network at any given time. For example, my Xbox One isn't on most of the time, my network printer is only on when I need to use it and the same for several other devices.

Unless you are going crazy, or those are all wireless clients, 20 something clients probably is not going to cause something like an airport extreme, even an early twenty teens airport extreme to crumble.

As for your expenses, I'd say $100 now and $100 a year from now only makes sense if you can still use whatever you spent the $100 on originally. If not, that just seems wasteful to me too.

 

[fistv]

A thought, my isp will allow 2 devices to connect to the cable modem but you need a switch. If I connect a 4 port switch to the cable modem, plug two routers in to the switch both will get IP's from the cable co. I wonder if putting a second wireless router on there just for the home automation stuff which is usually managed though an iphone or tablet anyway would reduce the load on your other wireless network.