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how much bandwidth do i really need for 1 tv, 2 3d tvs, 2 pcs and 2 smartphones?

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zer0nix

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our household is 3 people large. we have on occasion -but rarely- used 3 tvs (with at least one of these soon to be a 3d tv) and 2 pcs at once, with 2 of us also talking on phones independently (and these may soon be internet phones) .

at absolute theoretical max load: two people will be independently watching two separate 3d blue ray rips, one of us will be watching a blue ray rip, 2 computers will be downloading files and there will be texting and talking across 2 internet phones. altogether that's ...

20-40mbps* (plus 2 smartphones texting and receiving calls) / 300mbps on 2.4 ghz

20-60mbps** x2 + ( 333-x + x ) kbps*** / 300mbps on 5.2 ghz

plus overhead for 7 (?) simultaneous connections ... now, this is likely to be a very rare situation, but supposing this is the max, how much bandwidth do i really need?


...
a few weeks ago, i was about to purchase our first wireless router****, which at the time was to be an e4200 v1 true dual band n router.

the going price was $45 on ebay. emphasis on was. just when i was sure that i wanted that specific model, the price jumped up ... and it just kept going up and now the price for a used e4200 v1 is the same as the price for a factory refurbished e4200 v2, which is about $100 ...

so i was about to purchase an e4200 v2 when it suddenly occured to me that perhaps i'm buying more bandwidth than i need, hence this thread ...

advice please?


* a blue ray rip tends to have a bitrate of 20-40mbps
** a 3d blue ray rip tends to have a bitrate of 20-60mbps
*** i have the very cheapest cable internet ... according to speedtest.net it maxes out at 484kbps and actual transfer speeds tend to max out at around 310kbps ... unless broadband prices dramatically decrease, we have no intention of buying more internet bandwidth
**** up till now we've been swapping around portable hdds and messing with ethernet cables. yeah, i know, we're practically in the stone age.


EDIT: wellllllp, i'm an idiot. i'd forgotten about the max throughput of current routers, which puts my max usage estimation somewhere in dreamland.

a more ordinary usage pattern would be:

2 laptops browsing and dlling files , 1 tv playing a blue ray rip OR 1 laptop browsing and dlling files and 1 3dtv playing a 3d blue ray rip. internet phones may enter into the picture at some point but usage will be very low and we tend to pause our other activities when we're on the phone (other than file downloading, obviously).

that's ...

1 3d tv playing 3d blueray rips + 1 smartphone OR 2 smartphones on 2.4ghz
2 laptops browsing, dlling and listening to music from an nas on 5.2ghz

which seems a lot more modest.
 
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smartphones... calls use cellular, not WiFi (assuming you don't use VoIP on the smartphone, which very few do). So it's N/A.

texting - bandwidth demand is insignificant.

Web surfing - very low average bandwidth demand, except for streaming Netflix.

PCs streaming HD 1080i/p videos that are stored on your own servers that must be accessed from you LAN, not your router/WAN/ISP. 10-30Mbps. Only lower rates can be done well on WiFi. Higher rates (like more than 10Mbps constant) need to use wired connections. You LAN, if gigabit, can easily accommodate this. Even 10/100BT LAN (not gigabit) is good enough for streaming HD.

Your ISP provides you with an average of what? 5, 10, 20Mbps down? Most any decent router today can handle that on wired connections. WiFi in 2.4GHz isn't able do provide more than 10-20Mbps with good signal strengths. That's enough for Netflix from the Internet.
 
ESR600H has been much more stable than my prior EA4500 or E4200 were. But again everyone going to have their favorite WiFi Router or check the reviews here on SNB to see which one is on top.
 
My router (Cradlepoint) just sits, 100% ignored, working fine, month after month.
No debate on stability.
That's the way I want it.
 
My router (Cradlepoint) just sits, 100% ignored, working fine, month after month.
No debate on stability.
That's the way I want it.

By this suggestion I did try to order your Cradlepoint to give it a shot, but found out that the unit was defective and sent it right back to them. I am not saying all of them going to behave that way. ESR600H still running and I've throw all sorts of HDMI 1080p through and it hasn't caused anything yet..
 
I was too cheap to buy the latest Cradlepoint for home use. I found one on eBay for $60 that arrived in like-new packaging.

I also have an CTR500 portable travel router I carry around, with a Verizon LTE modem (USB) that plugs into the CTR500 or laptop. At work, I have a CTR500 hooked up with Verizon 3G and it's run for a year without rebooting.
 

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