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Help! Can't Decide! And some basics Q's.

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dollarbill

New Around Here
Sorry this is so long... I'm confused.
I have delved deep into the router charts and poured over the reviews. I still can't decide. I have fairly simple needs, but there are some things I just don't understand.

My setup:
Paying for RCN 50Mbps. We have a couple lap-tops and 2 iphones that need the wireless signal. They are all wireless N devices.

My situation:
I have a Cisco e1200 that works fine for a few hours and then the speeds deteriorate. When I jack straight into the modem and hit up speedtest.net I'll see 50Mbps. When I reset the router I'll see between 30 - 50mbps in the same room and between 15 - 40mbps on the other side of the apartment. Like I said... a couple hours later and I'm getting between 1 - 10 Mbps and everything has to get reset.

My guess is that the RAM is getting full on my router and resetting it is clearing it out. Does that make sense?

The charts have me freaked out because I see a number like 31.1 (which is what my e1200 gets in the 2.4ghz-throughput-down test) and that's lower than the 50Mbps that's coming into the house. Yet when I'm connected to wireless I can pull 50Mbps easy. So obviously there's something I don't understand about the tests. What gives?

I want to spend as little as possible, and I just need stability and something that will allow me to take advantage of the 50mbps speeds that I'm paying for. EDIT -- I guess I don't even need gigabit ports considering speed of the feed coming in.

Is the Cisco-e4200/Asus-u56n level overkill? I don't think I need the 5ghz band, so would the Belkin-F9K1103 work? Could I go even cheaper than those while maintaining stability (not resetting everything every day) and without wasting money on 50Mbps cable feed?
 
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The E1200 is a fine single-band 2 steam router.

Couple of things - Linksys (by Cisco) has had issues in the past with their uPNP stack, so try disabling uPNP.

Looking at the E1200 firmware release notes for the V2 variants, there were some performance issues that have been resolved with the most recent firmware, so check that as well.

do this first before throwing money at new hardware...

sfx
 
WiFi throughput (data speeds) will vary 2:1 or more in a short time.
Long term, it'll average out. Such is wireless.
The exception is if you have an air-time hoggy neighbor and if so, to escape, just change to another channel (in 2.4GHz, that's 1, 6 or 11).
 
I'm already on Channel 6. The router I have is the e1200 v1 and I upgraded to the latest firmware (1.0.3) when I started seeing problems. Thanks for the tip about upnp. I'll give that a shot for a couple days.

I didn't have a router when I signed up for this internet service so I thought I'd lease the one they provide while I looked for the right one to buy.

So I still need to get one. It sounds like you're saying I could just snag an e1200 or anything comparable?
 
The 31.1 Mbps you refer to is an average of all test locations. To see the individual location results use the Throughput vs. location button or the view selector up next to the benchmark selector.
 

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