Which Benchmarks Matter for Streaming?

[SDennett]

Hello everyone,
Just want to say that the information in these forums, the reviews, and charts is excellent! I really appreciate the time and effort put in. Now, my question.

I'm getting a new router some time in the next few months. This will be connected to FIOS 85/35 for our house. A big concern is making sure that video streaming works well — we've had some quality problems with Netflix and other VOD services in the past. Current router is an ASUS RT-N66U.

We've got multiple computers, several Tivos, and three iPads connected to the router via gigabit ethernet and wifi. At any given time there may be three or four video steams coming into the network.

My question: Which router benchmarks are the most relevant to video streaming?

- For routing, LAN to WAN Throughput, or Total Simultaneous Throughput?
- For WiFi, Downlink or UpDown Throughput?

Or, are there some other benchmarks, specs or features I should be looking for, such as Streamboost?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Steve

 

[thiggins]

The most important thing you need to do is identify why you had/have streaming problems with your current router.

The problems could be due to time-of-day service overloads (the 9PM Netflix problem) or concurrent Torrenting or other non streaming use.

On the wireless side, you could be exhausting available bandwidth, especially with mobile devices, which can't take advantage of the higher bandwidths available from higher class N and AC routers.

Once you know where your pain is coming from, then you can take appropriate action.

 

[L&LD]

As Tim suggested, you need to know the problem before you can solve it.

With 3 or 4 video streams at once (and I'm sure other devices doing lesser things too), it seems like your present router is at max capacity (or over).


1) Use software like inssider to see where your present connections are as-is. This will give you a baseline.

2) You may want to manually optimize your network settings for best performance with the following link and software like inssider.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=98452&postcount=150

3) Depending on the age of your firmware, you may want to upgrade to the latest Asus v.2239 Beta (working stable for me for a few days now) or RMerlin's 374.38_2-em version (in the experimental download folder).

See above link for performance with the -em firmware.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=100542&postcount=33

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=100877&postcount=42


4) If all the above still doesn't give you the results you need, an additional AP or a new AC router with higher benchmarks (all the ones you suggested) may get you there. Possibly, without even upgrading to AC clients on your devices (if possible at all).

The RT-AC56U is a powerful AC1200 class router with the same SoC and radios as the RT-AC68U with one antenna (and stream) less, and, the same firmware and capabilities (in other areas) as the bigger, 3 antenna/stream router.

Good deal on it till the 27th too.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=13805



If any or all the above don't fix your issues - then as Tim suggested it could be Netfix itself that has the problem. This is why you want to go through these suggestions in order, with purpose and really understand how your network works and what actually makes it tick.

For example; if your devices are now using the 2.4GHz band and your neighborhood is bursting with routers in the same band; simply moving to the 5GHz band will fix things now.

Or; splitting the devices to 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands may allow all of them to play nice together.

Remember that the 2.4GHz band is most effective (real world) at 20MHz width and the best setting for 5GHz is usually 40Mhz, but; the 5GHz range is shorter (exception: beta v.2239 ).


The hardware, while important is simply a piece of getting your network running smoothly. Planning/thinking about the location, capabilities and possibly upgradability (to AC clients) of all or some of your devices will go further to improving your network than just the router hardware can by itself.