Recommendations for wireless router with some specific requirements.
November 7, 2015 3:11 PM Subscribe
We currently have a WRT-160N which has on the whole been a reliable workhorse. However, it hasn't handled the proliferation of internet connected devices in our household very well, and it's ethernet wired connection is painfully slow (100Mbs) with our attached NAS. It therefore needs replacing. Looking for your suggestions. Specific requirements follow...
My specific requirements are:
1. Would ideally be paying between $100 and $200. We are based in Canada so specific links to products sold online here (or amazon.ca) are appreciated.
2. Should be fast and have a wide range. Our current WRT-160N has done pretty well in this respect (not too many dead spots in our 3 level house), but I'm sure newer routers can improve on this.
3. We recently purchased a VPN service so I would like a router that is VPN firmware compatible. I don't really know much about the various options (Open WRT, DD-WRT, Tomato). Moreover, are these easy to turn on and off through a web browser?
4. Must have a Gigabit wired ethernet connection (or faster if they exist) - to connect our Synology NAS.
5. It probably goes without saying, but looking for something reliable that can handle a large number of connected devices.
Thanks!
My specific requirements are:
1. Would ideally be paying between $100 and $200. We are based in Canada so specific links to products sold online here (or amazon.ca) are appreciated.
2. Should be fast and have a wide range. Our current WRT-160N has done pretty well in this respect (not too many dead spots in our 3 level house), but I'm sure newer routers can improve on this.
3. We recently purchased a VPN service so I would like a router that is VPN firmware compatible. I don't really know much about the various options (Open WRT, DD-WRT, Tomato). Moreover, are these easy to turn on and off through a web browser?
4. Must have a Gigabit wired ethernet connection (or faster if they exist) - to connect our Synology NAS.
5. It probably goes without saying, but looking for something reliable that can handle a large number of connected devices.
Thanks!
Best answer: Having recently bought one of these, I would recommend the following on the Amazon CA website for CDN121.00
The review of this router is at the wirecutter
From the article, the quote "The Archer C7 is faster and can cover a large area better than many routers that cost two to three times as much. It's good for larger apartments and multiroom houses."
Now, alternatively if you want a really big area router, which is also talked about on the wirecutter, is the Netgear R6400.
Unfortunately, the price is CDN333.33
However, this hits two of your sweet spots, namely the vpn and the ease of use
Again, from the website:
"If you value performance over price, get the Netgear R6400. It offers greater range and wireless-ac speeds around 40 percent faster at long distances than the Archer C7, its features are better, and it's a lot easier to use. However, it might be overkill if you don't do very much on your wireless-ac devices (or don't need to cover that much space with Wi-Fi)."
"....... the R6400 has a built-in VPN server for advanced users who want to secure their remote coffee shop browsing, a QoS feature to prioritize your network’s traffic (to get better video performance, for instance), and support for Time Machine backups (making it a good choice for an Apple household). The R6400 also has better parental controls and faster USB (with a 3.0 port for attaching storage devices) than the Archer C7."
posted by iNfo.Pump at 3:45 PM on November 7, 2015
The review of this router is at the wirecutter
From the article, the quote "The Archer C7 is faster and can cover a large area better than many routers that cost two to three times as much. It's good for larger apartments and multiroom houses."
Now, alternatively if you want a really big area router, which is also talked about on the wirecutter, is the Netgear R6400.
Unfortunately, the price is CDN333.33
However, this hits two of your sweet spots, namely the vpn and the ease of use
Again, from the website:
"If you value performance over price, get the Netgear R6400. It offers greater range and wireless-ac speeds around 40 percent faster at long distances than the Archer C7, its features are better, and it's a lot easier to use. However, it might be overkill if you don't do very much on your wireless-ac devices (or don't need to cover that much space with Wi-Fi)."
"....... the R6400 has a built-in VPN server for advanced users who want to secure their remote coffee shop browsing, a QoS feature to prioritize your network’s traffic (to get better video performance, for instance), and support for Time Machine backups (making it a good choice for an Apple household). The R6400 also has better parental controls and faster USB (with a 3.0 port for attaching storage devices) than the Archer C7."
posted by iNfo.Pump at 3:45 PM on November 7, 2015
It sounds like what you really need is a wired gigabit switch. If you are OK with the wireless performance and the router is handling the full speed of your Internet connection, there is no need to replace the router itself.
Just be aware that if you go that route, your wireless and Internet will be sharing a single 100Mbps pipe between the router and your gigabit switch, so you will only get gigabit speeds between the wired devices connected to the new switch. The remaining wired ports on the router will also use that same 100Mbps.
Personally, I've never found that to be a problem since real world wireless speeds only incredibly rarely hit 100Mbps and I've never had an ISP at home that delivers more than 50Mbps. Just be sure to use the router's ports for things like network printers or a Roku box or other devices that won't use a full 100Mbps across the local network.
posted by wierdo at 7:25 PM on November 7, 2015
Just be aware that if you go that route, your wireless and Internet will be sharing a single 100Mbps pipe between the router and your gigabit switch, so you will only get gigabit speeds between the wired devices connected to the new switch. The remaining wired ports on the router will also use that same 100Mbps.
Personally, I've never found that to be a problem since real world wireless speeds only incredibly rarely hit 100Mbps and I've never had an ISP at home that delivers more than 50Mbps. Just be sure to use the router's ports for things like network printers or a Roku box or other devices that won't use a full 100Mbps across the local network.
posted by wierdo at 7:25 PM on November 7, 2015
Internet routers with gigabit Ethernet ports are still rarer than they should be. If you find a machine that does everything else you want but only has 100Mbit Ethernet, you can just put a gigE switch between it and the rest of your network. That won't alter anything about the way your network currently works apart from letting all the gigabit devices connected to the switch talk amongst themselves at gigabit speeds.
For comms between your wireless devices and your NAS, the bottleneck will almost certainly be the wireless link, not the Ethernet port speed. 802.11n wireless can be rated up to 450Mbit/s if there are three antennas on either side of the link, but that's a maximum bare-air physical bit rate and doesn't translate to throughput anywhere near as predictably as the Ethernet bit rates do.
In my experience, Synology NAS boxes can also be quite surprisingly slow even over gigE so don't expect thunderous improvements there.
posted by flabdablet at 7:31 PM on November 7, 2015
For comms between your wireless devices and your NAS, the bottleneck will almost certainly be the wireless link, not the Ethernet port speed. 802.11n wireless can be rated up to 450Mbit/s if there are three antennas on either side of the link, but that's a maximum bare-air physical bit rate and doesn't translate to throughput anywhere near as predictably as the Ethernet bit rates do.
In my experience, Synology NAS boxes can also be quite surprisingly slow even over gigE so don't expect thunderous improvements there.
posted by flabdablet at 7:31 PM on November 7, 2015
Also, if your issue is contention amongst a horde of devices that can see your WAP but can't all see each other, as opposed to an actual throughput deficiency due to weak connections between WAP and devices: try looking for a wireless setting in the devices with options RTS/CTS vs CTS-to-self, and setting it to RTS/CTS. This should reduce time wasted on your wireless due to packet collisions, at the cost of a few percent on peak throughput.
posted by flabdablet at 7:41 PM on November 7, 2015
posted by flabdablet at 7:41 PM on November 7, 2015
Best answer: You're only as fast as your slowest link. In other words, if you're effectively getting under 100mb on your wireless link and that's how you're requesting files from your NAS, no amount of gigabit after the fact is going to help.
Anecdotally, I've also noticed that 2.4ghz is often easily overwhelmed with the proliferation of wireless devices people can put on them nowadays. What would have been okay just a mere year or so ago, is crippling today.
Having said all that, here's the route I would take.
First, I'd seriously look at Netgear's Nighthawk line. Closer to your price range would be the AC1900. They have Gb ports so that satisfies your gigabit requirement, too.
Second, I'd put any device that can handle it on the 5ghz side of the device. The general rule is, the higher the frequency, the higher the thoughtput but the lower the signal range. This makes 5ghz ideal for devices that are more stationary than not but if the range is satisfactory use it. This will give you better bandwidth on your wireless connections.
Third, when creating your 5ghz SSID, give it a unique name even if you just append a '5' to the other name. Don't make the mistake of letting your devices decide which signal is best because the algorithms that govern this are not always the best and vary from device to device. Additionally, if you plan to have a device connect to the 5ghz side most of the time, be sure to remove the 2.4ghz connection profile from your device. Again, this lets your device decide which signal is best... And it will decide wrong from time-to-time.
Hope this helps.
posted by tcv at 6:15 AM on November 8, 2015
Anecdotally, I've also noticed that 2.4ghz is often easily overwhelmed with the proliferation of wireless devices people can put on them nowadays. What would have been okay just a mere year or so ago, is crippling today.
Having said all that, here's the route I would take.
First, I'd seriously look at Netgear's Nighthawk line. Closer to your price range would be the AC1900. They have Gb ports so that satisfies your gigabit requirement, too.
Second, I'd put any device that can handle it on the 5ghz side of the device. The general rule is, the higher the frequency, the higher the thoughtput but the lower the signal range. This makes 5ghz ideal for devices that are more stationary than not but if the range is satisfactory use it. This will give you better bandwidth on your wireless connections.
Third, when creating your 5ghz SSID, give it a unique name even if you just append a '5' to the other name. Don't make the mistake of letting your devices decide which signal is best because the algorithms that govern this are not always the best and vary from device to device. Additionally, if you plan to have a device connect to the 5ghz side most of the time, be sure to remove the 2.4ghz connection profile from your device. Again, this lets your device decide which signal is best... And it will decide wrong from time-to-time.
Hope this helps.
posted by tcv at 6:15 AM on November 8, 2015
Best answer: I picked up a refurbished Netgear R6250 AC1600 router (~$70) a couple years ago and it's been great. I have 7-8 devices connected to it. Transfers to my NAS are over 100MB/s, which is basically the limit for a NAS on gigabit. Before I ran a wire to my PC, I think I was getting ~30MB/s with a 5ghz N adapter. No built-in VPN client, but it can be flashed with dd-wrt or tomato.
Amazon.ca links: R6250, R6300 both are CDN130
posted by unmake at 10:32 AM on November 8, 2015
Amazon.ca links: R6250, R6300 both are CDN130
posted by unmake at 10:32 AM on November 8, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far. A couple of responses:
iNfo.Pump: the R6400 does seem expensive in Canada, but I can pick up a R7000 for $200 on amazon.ca. Is this similar or at least as good as the R6400?
wierdo, flabdablet: a gigabit switch does sound promising, but I think the problem is that the only wired device on our network is the NAS with all other devices (2 macbooks, ipad, imac and android phones, apple tv, roku) connecting wirelessly. Doesn't sound like it would help with the 100Mbs bottleneck of the WRT160N. The main problem is backing up stuff from our devices to the NAS. (oh, I now see tcv has addressed this).
posted by piyushnz at 1:55 PM on November 8, 2015
iNfo.Pump: the R6400 does seem expensive in Canada, but I can pick up a R7000 for $200 on amazon.ca. Is this similar or at least as good as the R6400?
wierdo, flabdablet: a gigabit switch does sound promising, but I think the problem is that the only wired device on our network is the NAS with all other devices (2 macbooks, ipad, imac and android phones, apple tv, roku) connecting wirelessly. Doesn't sound like it would help with the 100Mbs bottleneck of the WRT160N. The main problem is backing up stuff from our devices to the NAS. (oh, I now see tcv has addressed this).
posted by piyushnz at 1:55 PM on November 8, 2015
the only wired device on our network is the NAS with all other devices (2 macbooks, ipad, imac and android phones, apple tv, roku) connecting wirelessly.
Then moving big files around over your network is always going to be slow, because wireless just sucks, and always will do compared to whatever is achievable over wires or fibres in any given year. If care about raw speed, use wires. Wireless is for portability and good-enough-for-streaming speed only.
posted by flabdablet at 5:18 PM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Then moving big files around over your network is always going to be slow, because wireless just sucks, and always will do compared to whatever is achievable over wires or fibres in any given year. If care about raw speed, use wires. Wireless is for portability and good-enough-for-streaming speed only.
posted by flabdablet at 5:18 PM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sticking CloudStation on your Synology box, giving it a night or two to do initial sync over gigabit Ethernet, then running further sync updates over wireless should be relatively painless.
posted by flabdablet at 5:20 PM on November 8, 2015
posted by flabdablet at 5:20 PM on November 8, 2015
Response by poster: I did a bit of digging on real-world wifi speeds and found:
WRT-160N - 40.3Mbps (source)
Netgear R7000 - 448Mbps (source)
So I'm probably going to get the R7000 or one of it's variants since it seems to address both bottlenecks (WIFI and wired ethernet) on our network. Thanks for all your very helpful responses.
posted by piyushnz at 9:56 AM on November 9, 2015
WRT-160N - 40.3Mbps (source)
Netgear R7000 - 448Mbps (source)
So I'm probably going to get the R7000 or one of it's variants since it seems to address both bottlenecks (WIFI and wired ethernet) on our network. Thanks for all your very helpful responses.
posted by piyushnz at 9:56 AM on November 9, 2015
If that 448Mbits/s speed is an actual throughput measurement for that WAP, it would have to be to an 802.11ac station; you'd be hard pressed achieving even half of that over 802.11n regardless of how good the WAP is. So although the R7000 will most likely be a substantial improvement over the WRT-160N, it still won't get you performance anywhere close to gigE unless you upgrade the wireless NICs in your devices as well.
posted by flabdablet at 3:06 PM on November 9, 2015
posted by flabdablet at 3:06 PM on November 9, 2015
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posted by wotsac at 3:42 PM on November 7, 2015