Too many options

[Hashbash]

I am new to this forum and made an account to hopefully get my home wifi problem straightened out, my knowledge of routers is very basic, no VPN, until today I didn't even know firmware other than factory existed. Anyway, I moved to a larger home and bought the Linksys EA4500, I had no issues with it. However after a year I started to notice that on the 2nd floor my iphone would switch over to LTE because of low signal, even my macbook sometimes has trouble loading youtube videos. I tried to update the firmware and nothing seemed to work.

My main issue is range, I need advice on a router that can cover my home. I just ran a test on my bandwidth on my desktop which is wired through the router. Directly from modem I got 115/20, via router I'm at 115/3, pretty big hit on the upload. However, upload isn't my biggest issue here, but being able to take advantage of all my bandwidth would be a plus.

I have seen the R7000, but a lot of reviews mention problems with firmware and how it goes bad in a year or so. The other router I was looking at was an ASUS either N or if its worth it an AC.

I don't want anything fancy, I need a solid router that can send a signal throughout a 2000sqft home of 2 floors, support 115/20 bandwidth and feed 4 laptops, 4 smartphones, 2 smart tv's. I want to be able to keep this router going steady for more than 1 year this time.

 

[stevech]

Improve coverage on 2nd floor, etc., by adding a WiFi access point (AP).
Handhelds don't need a costly AP.
Any WiFi router can be re-purposed as an AP.

I use one of these multi-function products
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320168&cm_re=rt-n12-_-33-320-168-_-Product

To connect the AP to your router's LAN port, use either
MoCA (IP over existing TV coax.
HomePlug/HPNA (IP over power wiring).

See the forum here on MoCA/Homeplug.

I suggest not using the same SSID for both the AP and the router. Use names like MyFloor2 and MyMain

So handheld device user can manually choose. Most phones/tablets do NOT automatically choose the "best" access.

 

[Hashbash]

I'd rather just stick to one router, its bad enough trying to keep up with this one. I have to reset it once a week because it will start acting up. I am not opposed to even using the Asus RT-N66U if it will meet my needs. I was hoping to get some input from anyone who has experience with a good range N router or AC. It seems AC doesn't really provide better range though being on a 5GHz band, although I might be wrong.

 

[Ronv42]

The EDGE area's of homes is mostly the issue I have seen. For example I have a friend that has a giant mirror in his living room and it even though he has a central router within 25 feet of the room signals suck there because of the reflective surfaces make the wireless look like noise. The only solution we found for him was an access point and lowered both routers power level.

In your case a good router that supports beam forming may be the choice. This has resolved a master bedroom issue for another friend of mine where he was unable to use a wireless roku reliably. We put in a Asus AC1900 router the AC68U and it solved his issue.

 

[thiggins]

Only way to know is buy and try. But with the number and mix of devices you have, it might be better to add an access point anyway. Especially if multiple devices are active simultaneously and streaming video.

 

[htismaqe]

It seems AC doesn't really provide better range though being on a 5GHz band, although I might be wrong.

I can say from personal experience that this is not true.

I had both a Netgear WNDR3700 and an Asus RT-N66U, the top performers of the N600 and N900 routers respectively.

I've tested the R7000, RT-AC68U, and the Linksys WRT1900AC as well and there is no comparison when it comes to range, especially throughput at long range. The AC1900 routers are all quite a bit more powerful.

 

[bbb0777]

I can say from personal experience that this is not true.

I had both a Netgear WNDR3700 and an Asus RT-N66U, the top performers of the N600 and N900 routers respectively.

I've tested the R7000, RT-AC68U, and the Linksys WRT1900AC as well and there is no comparison when it comes to range, especially throughput at long range. The AC1900 routers are all quite a bit more powerful.

At least with the n66u, is it running SDK6 firmware though? When I had an N66 it was amazing, until on SDK6 firmware, then it was about neck-and-neck with my $20 TP-Link for range.

 

[azazel1024]

I'll make the bold statement that it doesn't matter. Look at THiggins article on testing 11ac routers versus 11n routers with 11n clients. The 11ac routers blew the 11n ones out of the water.

That is my experience as well. At close range performance with 11n clients isn't all that much better with 11ac routers, but at medium to extreme range, performance is significantly better. Easilly an increase of 80% with my testing at long and extreme range compared to my 11n router, even though the both have very, very close to the same absolute maximum connection range. The 5GHz performance with 11n 5GHz clients is even more improved, about double the performance at medium and long distance (of course 11ac means EVEN BETTER performance at those distances compared to my not very old WDR3600 N600 router).

So if it isn't actually maximum range that is the issue, but performance within your existing coverage envelope, even with "legacy" 11n clients, moving to an 11ac router is likely to improve things quite a bit.

Of course depending on house layout, moving to an 11ac router that has detachable antennas and upsizing 1 or 2 steps (like from 5dBi to 7, 8 or 9dBi) will also improve performance at range a fair amount. That might also improve absolute maximum range too, but don't get your hopes up too much. Indoor environments are harsh for Wifi as doors, walls and furniture (let alone duct work, wiring and plumbing) abosrb wifi a lot. So 2-4dB of extra signal from bigger antennas might not be enough to punch a signal in to a room where you couldn't get any reception before, but it might be enough to give you 20-40% better performance at locations where you already could get signal (at longer ranges).

The only real solution for mobile clients which can't get a wifi signal in a location is adding more access points or range extenders to cover the dead spots. Bigger antennas MIGHT work, but probably won't. For fixed cleints where you can replace their antennas, moving to bigger antennas on the client and on the router has a much better chance of working, since if you are moving from 3-5dBi client antennas to 7-9dBi client antennas and the router might be moving from 3-5dBi also to 7-9dBi, you can get a combined gain of 4-12dB, which is a lot more significant than what you can get from just switching up the router side of things.

 

[htismaqe]

The 11ac routers blew the 11n ones out of the water.

That is my experience as well. At close range performance with 11n clients isn't all that much better with 11ac routers, but at medium to extreme range, performance is significantly better.

This definitely coincides with my experience.

 

[vn800art]

Good day everybody.
So OP says he has problems on the second floor. We understand modem is in the first floor, then. Considering that the modem should be positioned in the middle of the house, at floor 1 level if you lift it towards the ceiling you should have better performance on both levels ( 1st and 2nd ). Difficult to say if in this way you could cover all the property. Trial and error this time. I couldn't resist this time I had to jump in and give my opinion.
Regards
Alessandro
Btw I am actually using R7000 and I changed only the last two stock firmwares, so I am not suffering any problems. I tend to buy what is a well refined product ( even if in this way I am not always in the newest fields ), but avoiding nowadays usual habit to treat customers as "guinea pigs".

Inviato dal mio Nexus 5 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

[TonyH]

+1,
If possible relocate router to top floor first to see the difference. My house is 2 story, always
router is located on the loft upstairs. I have good coverage down to basement.

 

[RogerSC]

I'd be curious to see where you're reading that the Netgear R7000 goes bad in a year *smile*? I've had my R7000 for just over a year now (early user), which is about as old as they are, and it still works as well as when I first got it. Actually, it works better, since the firmware has gotten a lot better over time. For a while the only really stable firmware was dd-wrt. As of a few releases ago, the Netgear firmware has gotten to be very stable as well.

I realize that my experience is only one data point, but I haven't heard this one before. Every individual unit of electronic products has it's own individual lifetime, of course, and one should look at the overall statistics, not particular anecdotal stories, but I'm curious about this one.

 

[htismaqe]

I'd be curious to see where you're reading that the Netgear R7000 goes bad in a year *smile*? I've had my R7000 for just over a year now (early user), which is about as old as they are, and it still works as well as when I first got it. Actually, it works better, since the firmware has gotten a lot better over time. For a while the only really stable firmware was dd-wrt. As of a few releases ago, the Netgear firmware has gotten to be very stable as well.

I realize that my experience is only one data point, but I haven't heard this one before. Every individual unit of electronic products has it's own individual lifetime, of course, and one should look at the overall statistics, not particular anecdotal stories, but I'm curious about this one.

As you know, both of us are users over at the Netgear forum as well as here.

I haven't read about any widespread failure trends at the 1-year mark.