802.11ac Router with 802.11n Clients?

[alex2364]

Right now I have a Netgear WNDR3700v1 router, it's 802.11n 300 + 300 Mbps simultaneous dual-band, with a few 802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz clients. I want to increase the range of my 5GHz clients. I noticed sometimes when I'm at the far end of the house, I'm getting dropped packets when I ping the router even though I'm constantly connected with 2 out of 3 bars and my ping latency has been 20-30ms to the router.

If I switch to a 802.11ac router with my existing 802.11n 5GHz clients, would it help my range and drop latency to below 10ms?

 

[stevech]

Right now I have a Netgear WNDR3700v1 router, it's 802.11n 300 + 300 Mbps simultaneous dual-band, with a few 802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz clients. I want to increase the range of my 5GHz clients. I noticed sometimes when I'm at the far end of the house, I'm getting dropped packets when I ping the router even though I'm constantly connected with 2 out of 3 bars and my ping latency has been 20-30ms to the router.

If I switch to a 802.11ac router with my existing 802.11n 5GHz clients, would it help my range and drop latency to below 10ms?

Not much.

If you see dropped packets with ping, then real IP traffic will have a lot higher packet error rate. To me, this means you need an access point (AP) in the weak signal area of the home. Or move the one WiFi router. Of course, be sure to use 20MHz only config. And try the WiFi router on a different channel 1, 6 or 11 in case you have a neighbor who is at times, an airtime hog. Solves problems like iPAD orientation not good, in lap buried in furniture, etc.

I've added an AP that's not very far from the WiFi router, just to improve the fade margin and average data rate for the iPAD that's used a lot. I used a $35 (Newegg) ASUS RT-N12D1 which has an AP mode.

 

[alex2364]

I tried that option already, only problem is there is no ethernet cable from the 2nd access point back to the router. I tried using a Linksys PLEK500 Powerline, which is rated at 500 Mbps, but I only get around 25 Mbps from the powerline to the router. I'm trying to stream high def video and need a consistent 50 Mbps preferably.

 

[RogerSC]

I tried that option already, only problem is there is no ethernet cable from the 2nd access point back to the router. I tried using a Linksys PLEK500 Powerline, which is rated at 500 Mbps, but I only get around 25 Mbps from the powerline to the router. I'm trying to stream high def video and need a consistent 50 Mbps preferably.

If you have cable TV coax in your walls, and aren't using satellite TV, you can easily get that streaming speed with MoCA. With MoCA, you're using your double-shielded cable TV coax as a carrier, rather than noisy power lines. This works great for me, to stream from my computer/modem/router position to my entertainment center in my living room. So you would use it to connect to your AP instead of powerline networking.

Check it out, as well as articles on this site, there's a forum here where you can ask questions about it.

 

[stevech]

I tried that option already, only problem is there is no ethernet cable from the 2nd access point back to the router. I tried using a Linksys PLEK500 Powerline, which is rated at 500 Mbps, but I only get around 25 Mbps from the powerline to the router. I'm trying to stream high def video and need a consistent 50 Mbps preferably.

What device is needing 50Mbps?

Believe me, if your device truly needs 50Mbps net yield with TCP/IP overhead (and I find that hard to fathom since even Netflix's best quality is 8Mbps or less)... then you'll need cat5.