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No one can seem to answer this - 450mbps TOTAL throughput

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yoster

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Ok I'm hoping you guys can help me. Netgear support was WORTHLESS. Also, no websites that I can find speak to this SPECIFIC question. My question is about 450mbps router total throughput capacity/overhead/ or maybe you could even call it wireless protocol.

If any of the below is unclear, please let me know. It's kind of difficult to explain via writing.

I just bought a netgear r4500 router and I have a very specific question about the 450mbps capability. Now - as everyone and their mom points out, you need a 450mbps network adapter to achieve a 450mbps connection speed. That I understand - and that I don't care about.

Here's what I do care about. To make this easy, lets put together a scenario:

* I have no 450mbps clients - I have a bunch of 150 and 300 clients.
* Lets assume they're all on 2.4ghz band for the sake of conversation
* Lets also say we have another router, a 300mbps router.
* Both the 450 and 300 routers each have many wireless clients - all using 300 and 150 cards
* Now lets say, that all of a sudden, EVERY wireless client tried to download something (like, from a gbps wired device on the router.) Basically - EVERY wireless client is trying to max out it's data rate.
* Ok, so this puts us in a situation where the ROUTER is the bottleneck (that's what I'm trying to simulate anyway.)

So the BIG question - Comparing the 300mbps and 450mbps router, even though no SINGLE device is connected at 450mbps, will the 450mbps offer more TOTAL throughput (act as less of a bottleneck) than the 300mbps router? Or does it not work that way?

Everyone says there's no point in a 450 router if you don't have a 450 device.. but I want to know if a 450 gives you better overhead in of multiple, high traffic wireless situations (like my example.)

Hope this makes sense!!!!
 
450 is a measure of link rate, not aggregate throughput. If only two streams are being used (no three stream devices are connected) then 300 is the effective aggregate throughput. Keep in mind that with overhead and other factors, 300 is more of a performance tier than an actual upper bound.

It seems like a waste of an antenna/stream. 802.11ac plans to address this with multi-user MIMO.
 
450 is a measure of link rate, not aggregate throughput. If only two streams are being used (no three stream devices are connected) then 300 is the effective aggregate throughput. Keep in mind that with overhead and other factors, 300 is more of a performance tier than an actual upper bound.

It seems like a waste of an antenna/stream. 802.11ac plans to address this with multi-user MIMO.

Finally a response that makes sense!

Yes - I agree completely. What a waste of antenna/steam?! I was hoping the router would be 'smart' enough to assign an unused stream to other non 3-stream devices, but I guess that isn't the case.

Well sir you helped me answer the question - the 450 router is going back for a 300. Thanks!!!
 
Finally a response that makes sense!

Yes - I agree completely. What a waste of antenna/steam?! I was hoping the router would be 'smart' enough to assign an unused stream to other non 3-stream devices, but I guess that isn't the case.

Well sir you helped me answer the question - the 450 router is going back for a 300. Thanks!!!

One advantage a three-stream router has over two is that the router can choose the two streams which provide the best signal quality. This could theoretically improve performance, but I don't know how significant the real-world effects are.
 
Well it's definitely something to consider. I like knowing all the pro's and con's. the information on 3-stream routers in non 3-stream environments is somewhat lacking, so this helps. Thanks again.
 
Prior when I had own N450 WiFi Gigabit made by Trend-net and having no N450 clients only N300 clients. The results were N224 to N228 at the time measuring.. Throughput wasn't the same with other brands of N300 WiFi Routers. Trendnet seems slower. 3x Stream.
 
The answer may be yes or it may be no. SmallNetBuilders has reviewed wired and wireless routing throughputs for the WNDR4500. I don't recall if throughputs were measured for multiple clients running at the same time with the WNDR4500, but this has been measured with the new draft 802.11ac like Netgear's 6300. The results were that these new routers were able to provide more throughput to multiple clients simultaneously. (none of the clients were draft 802.11ac clients)

The point here is that different routers perform differently with wired and wireless routing, whether with single clients or multiple clients operating simultaneously.

So, while your question is incomplete in providing specifics (the 300 Mb/s AP), and not that I would be able to give you a specific answer anyways, the answer remains the same - maybe and possible of significance (especially with simultaneous large data transfers).

See if you can find your other wireless router on SmallNetBuilder's Router Charts such as http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/77-max-simul-conn and http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/76-total-simul. Compare with the WNDR4500. Check out the other Benchmarks you can select as your interest dictates.
 
I'm a big believer in 3-stream MIMO - even if you don't have 3-stream clients, a 3-stream router will improve capacity...
 

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