on AT&T DSL with large home, which wifi router + adapter?

[gychang]

Presently on DSL live in a large home, 4K sq ft and have a access point to extend the range.

My router is few years old Dlink DIR655 with a n wifi adapter, and wondering if I move up whether I will notice improvement. Like most of household we have usually about 3-4 devices connected.

Guess now the sweet spot is AC1200 range routers but with a DSL connection (seems relatively quick with netflix, youtube, rare gaming...). Looking for most bang for the buck and like to extend the range so can get rid of access point.

Am looking into Asus RT-56N router with Asus USB-N53 (both dual N300) but maybe should move up to AC1200?

looking for advice, thanks

 

[Trip]

For an N-class device, the 655 is actually not too shabby range-wise, but the newer AC stuff is actually shown to increase N range -- perhaps the point where you wouldn't need that second access point if you were to purchase one of the higher-power models in the AC1900 class. That would be where the "sweet spot" is in terms of cost-vs-performance, IMHO. A TP-Link Archer C9 offers a pretty good value and appears quite solid on the stock firmware, all updates applied, of course.

For the sake of simplicity and sanity, I think that would be the best place to start. We could start getting into the merits of more wiring if possible, powerline, MoCa, wireless WDS and all that, but I sense it's not warranted at this point... I had also started a blurb on quality-of-service (QoS) and how it can make more of a difference than any newfangled router not running it, but I don't know your skill level when it comes to networking and configuring this stuff, so for the time being we can just shelve all that and see how a single new router works out.

 

[gychang]

A TP-Link Archer C9 offers a pretty good value and appears quite solid on the stock firmware, all updates applied, of course.

do u think my home with dsl I will notice some improvement?

 

[Trip]

Improvement in range? Quality of service? Both? Other?
BTW, if you know, what is the speed of your DSL line -- up/down in Mb/s?

 

[stevech]

4K sq. ft. home...
You'd be much better off with cable company's modem internet service and add one or two WiFi access points.
And you'd be rid of AT&T.

Cable modem is very much faster/better than DSL or "U-Verse"

 

[gychang]

4K sq. ft. home...
You'd be much better off with cable company's modem internet service and add one or two WiFi access points.
And you'd be rid of AT&T.

Cable modem is very much faster/better than DSL or "U-Verse"

unforttunately I live in a closed community, where the cable is not available, long story... stuck with DSL, luckier than some of my neighbors.. I don't have "U-verse" but have a high speed DSL but don't know the numbers...

 

[sfx2000]

unforttunately I live in a closed community, where the cable is not available, long story... stuck with DSL, luckier than some of my neighbors.. I don't have "U-verse" but have a high speed DSL but don't know the numbers...

If you're not getting TV thru ATT, then the ATT DSL modem is basically giving your a WAN pipe... (e.g. not U-Verse)...

An AC1900 class router will help, but 4,000 sq foot is a lot of space to cover, esp. for 5GHz

 

[coxhaus]

4K sq. ft. home...
You'd be much better off with cable company's modem internet service and add one or two WiFi access points.
And you'd be rid of AT&T.

Cable modem is very much faster/better than DSL or "U-Verse"

It depends on how many routing loops the cable company has. I had to get off Time Warner when they upgraded their network. The number of ms delays had increased dramatically. Sometimes as high as 500 ms. It was killing me and could not stand it. You could see the problems with trace route. They would not fix them. I gave them 6 months and I quit Time Warner. Maybe in a couple of years they will fix their network problems. I can't stand slow response time. I would rather have fast response time than big pipes.

 

[sfx2000]

It depends on how many routing loops the cable company has.

OP is DSL...

Not cable//

 

[Trip]

Getting back on track, if it's just range your looking to increase then maybe a newer AC-class all-in-one would help, but there's certainly nothing wrong with multiple access points, and in many cases it's preferable. There's often no substitute for *more* radios, as opposed to just amping up the power of a single radio. Additionally, if your wifi at its weakest point is still faster than your internet connection (which is certainly possible with DSL) and you don't have much of a need for high-speed traffic between endpoints inside your LAN, then you might not need to do much upgrading at all (if any). It all depends on what kind of performance gains you want here...

If the previous scenario is true and wifi seems fast enough, but you're still looking to improve general "snappiness" of browsing, streaming, cloud file transfers, etc. then first try turning on Quality-of-Service (QoS) on the 655. Just select "Auto-Classification" as opposed to specifying any rules/classes. It keeps things simple and will basically take VoIP, gaming, browsing and/or any other latency-affected traffic and prioritize it to the top of the queue when/if your uplink is being saturated.

If you suspect wifi *and* performance are both falling short, then yes, perhaps something new is in order, and there's only way to be sure at that point: buy and try. You might as well go straight for the most powerful N-range you can afford, like an R7000 or WRT1900AC. If they cut it, great, you're done. If not, well than at least you have some serious processing power, and you can simply re-purpose your 655 as an access point in the place where wifi is still weak.

 

[coxhaus]

I have a large home without a basement so my home is long. I have never been able to cover my house with one wireless router. You may find one unit may cover enough so you are happy. I lived with partial coverage for a while. I now use 3 wireless access points.

 

[gychang]

I plan to get TP-Link Archer C5, now have to find an ideal USB adapter that is linux compatible. Preferably with antenna, any suggestion?.

 

[Trip]

Here's a somewhat-recent shortlist, ordered by chipset. I've usually had the best luck with Atheros, and it's also the one in that list with an external antenna -- the TP-Link W722N. Only 150Mb/s, though, as opposed to a dual-antenna unit for 300 Mb/s, but in a short search that's the one I found that seems universally supported by Linux. At least that's a starting point.

 

[gychang]

Thanks, Trip. I will look closely, prefer usb stick with AC, I appreciate the suggestion.

 

[sfx2000]

I plan to get TP-Link Archer C5, now have to find an ideal USB adapter that is linux compatible. Preferably with antenna, any suggestion?.

Finding an 11ac USB adapter that is linux friendly is a bit of a challenge - Realtek and Ralink are usually pretty good about drivers on their USB chipsets, but this round has been a bit of a challenge - Asus/Edimax/TP-Link Realtek based devices had drivers, but Linux 3.10 and later borked them due to changes in how the kernel handles ioctl's...

 

[stevech]

unforttunately I live in a closed community, where the cable is not available, long story... stuck with DSL, luckier than some of my neighbors.. I don't have "U-verse" but have a high speed DSL but don't know the numbers...

Best high speed DSL is about 6Mbps down and 2Mbps up. But speed depends on length of the phone wire from your home to the nearest "DSLAM" box, or the central office.

Do you get TV via Cable Company? Or satellite dish?

 

[gychang]

Best high speed DSL is about 6Mbps down and 2Mbps up. But speed depends on length of the phone wire from your home to the nearest "DSLAM" box, or the central office.

Do you get TV via Cable Company? Or satellite dish?

no cable or dish..., sadly

 

[sfx2000]

Best high speed DSL is about 6Mbps down and 2Mbps up. But speed depends on length of the phone wire from your home to the nearest "DSLAM" box, or the central office.

Do you get TV via Cable Company? Or satellite dish?

http://www.att.net/speedtiers

 

[L&LD]

Best high speed DSL is about 6Mbps down and 2Mbps up. But speed depends on length of the phone wire from your home to the nearest "DSLAM" box, or the central office.

That is not true of DSL worldwide.

Depending on where you are, 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up is possible too.

 

[gychang]

4AM, speednet test from my wifi connection is 11msec ping, 5.11mbps download, 0.68mbps upload. at 6PM, 125msec ping, 2.2mbps download, 0.22mbps upload yesterday.