What else am I missing...and some other questions.

[Medicius]

So I've been using my WRT400n for a few years now. And heavily for the last year and a half (ever since I was promoted). But when I set it up with WEP (seemed to be the easiest) I wasn't aware that I'd be limiting my wireless speed to 54mbps. Last night, while reading a post on these forums talking about security setup I learned that WAP and WAP2 (AES?) would give me better speeds. Now I'm seeing up to 130 in spiked speeds (via Win7's network status window).

I've been browsing more threads trying to learn what else I don't know (getting to be a lot...) and it's getting overwhelming. So I thought I'd just come out and ask a few questions. The first is pretty general since I don't know what I'm looking for in the answer. The others are fairly specific.

Any help is appreciated. I know a lot of the veteran posters here see a lot of us "noobs" ask questions and I just want to say thank you in advance. It can't be easy trying to answer questions which seem fairly basic to you. But from my point of view, they're questions that exceed my current know-how by a lot.

So...

Question 1:
Last night, after changing from WEP to WAP-AES and seeing better speeds for my Wireless N clients (laptops - 3) when streaming from netflix I figured there's probably a ton of additional information that I don't know but maybe some easy stuff I could fiddle with. So...are there additional settings in my router configuration page that I should look at/investigate?

Question 2:
I'm really a Fire and Forget type of person. I like routers that I setup one time and never have to fiddle with again. I've really liked my WRT400n until just recently (last 3-4 months) because up until that point I never had to hard reset my router. Now I'm doing it once or twice a night to recover from loss of wireless signals. So in my un-educated state I'm figuring it's time to buy a new router.

I looked at the reviews on this site and merged with my comfort level with Cisco/Linksys I'm thinking the E4200 is going to be the best bet. But I was also looking at WNDR3800 and the WNDR4500. I have no experience with Netgear and their reliability though. Also, because I work from home solely and have to drive in if my internet connection fails, I now have two active ISPs (cable and dsl). When one fails, I switch the wireless router to the other modem and continue on with work. But I want to get to a situation where I just have two wireless routers. So...would the E4200 be a better solution than either the WNDR3800/4500 if I planned on using two wireless routers at the same time (one connected to the DSL modem the other to the Cable modem)? Or am I missing a simpler solution?

Question 3:
Really related to question 2, if I run two wireless routers at the same time, could I have one managing wireless connections for my remaining legacy (G) connections and one for my (N) connections until I get rid of my remaining (G) connections (BB, Tivo, etc) without interference and to increase media streaming and online gaming for the N clients?

Question 4:
On the wired side (sorry I know this is the wireless forum, but most of my questions are related to wireless and I'd really like to keep this all in the same thread for ease of use) how does the 10/100/1000 rating relate to my ISP speeds? Should a 10/100 rated wired connection never have a bottleneck on a 10Mbps ISP connection? Will I even need the 10/100/1000 rating on the wired connection if my ISP maxes out at 10 (DSL) or 12Mbps (Cable) (I know it's slow, but live in the middle of nowhere)? Or am I not understanding what the wired port rating means?

Thanks again for any assistance,

Medicius

 

[stevech]

Question 1:
Last night, after changing from WEP to WAP-AES and seeing better speeds for my Wireless N clients (laptops - 3) when streaming from netflix.... So...are there additional settings in my router configuration page that I should look at/investigate?

Just the usual choices of "allow mixed 11g/n" or not, "20/40MHz" auto/manual/20-only.
Note that Netflix from the internet requires about 1Mbps or so. Far less than the lowest WiFi speed. But if you can, try to use wired connection for Netflix to reduce glitches due to WiFi competition for air-time among you and your neighbors, unless you're in a rural area. You can use cat5 cable, HomePlug AV or MoCA in lieu of WiFi.

Question 2:
once or twice a night to recover from loss of wireless signals. So in my un-educated state I'm figuring it's time to buy a new router. [\QUOTE] Unlikely your router is at fault. Next time it happens, try to turn WiFi off/on at the client side and see what happens. It may be your client trying to change to a different network SSID or some such.

Question 3:
Really related to question 2, if I run two wireless routers at the same time,

You can improve coverage by adding WiFi access points (APs). There's a FAQ section here on how to do that. APs can be purchased, or can be a specially configured/re-purposed router. The AP can connect back to your router via cat5 cable, HomePlug AV or MoCA. Don't try to use a WiFi repeater.

Question 4:
On the wired side (sorry I know this is the wireless forum, but most of my questions are related to wireless and I'd really like to keep this all in the same thread for ease of use) how does the 10/100/1000 rating relate to my ISP speeds?

Thanks again for any assistance,

Medicius

Your WiFi speeds, as indicated, such as 54Mbps are the raw rate. The net yield to you (at the IP protocol layer) is about 60% of the indicated rate.
The net yield rate is typically far higher than the common home DSL/cable modem. But WiFi is always the last resort, when cat5 cable, HomePlug AV or MoCA are all impractical, or the client device is pedestrian.

 

[88keyz]

Instead of the E4200 you might also try the E3000 (on sale today at NewEgg with free shipping for $69.99) and then upgrade to the Toastman Tomato firmware for a rock solid router with enhanced features.

Just install the lastest version from the 1.28.7xxx tree (currently 1.28.7490.2) then set it and forget it. The filename for the version you'd want for the E3000 would be formatted like "tomato-E3000USB-NVRAM60K-1.28.7xxxMIPSR2-Toastman-RT-Ext.bin".

Adds many great features to the Broadcom based Linksys/Cisco routers while maintaining an easy to use interface and rock solid reliability. I currently have three WRT160Nv3's running in bridge mode and at last check all three were over 120 days without a reboot and working fine. And, the last reboot was because of a short power outage not a router issue. Have had these up and running with Tomato for over a year and haven't had a single issue or lock-up. Used to run DD-WRT for bridge mode and it was an unstable mess, after going to Tomato I'd never go back.

I would suggest trying it for your current router but the WRT400N is based on an Atheros chipset which isn't supported by Tomato at this point. Also given the price of the E3000 why not upgrade.

Edit: For more info on the Toastman build's of Tomato check out this thread over at LinksysInfo.org where you can get information from fellow users as well as from Toastman himself. Great resource if you have any questions about the firmware.