Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Need a new router

Hi guys! My router at home has been giving me a few problems lately, mainly I can't connect to the internet or it boots me off. It's a Cisco Links WRT54G (I've had it for about 8 years now). I'm in the market for a new one. I have my Xbox 360 connected directly to it, then I have my PS3 and laptop that are connected to it wireless. I do play video games online.

I was needing some help to pick one out. My budget will just be south of $80-$90. Any help is appreciated!

Also, I do have one other question. I was wanting to hook my modem up downstairs to my A/V system. I also have Cox Cable. Can I use a two way splitter to hook that up, or do I have to have a dedicated line going outside to my cable box? Thanks again!

I replaced an old WRT54G with a Linksys E3000 a while back. Completely satisfied.

I'm totally baffled by your other question, though. Do you have Cox Cable for internet, too? If not, who provides your internet? Is it colocated with the Cable box or what?

Sorry. I really tried. Maybe I need a cocktail first.

Professionals will be along shortly.

Well, I don't know about professionals but I'm here!

I replaced that exact router a few years ago as I wanted faster wireless. Initially I bought the D-Link DIR###(can't recall model but it's outdated anyway now) because it had some really flexible functionality. Unfortunately it simply would not play nice with my Sonos system no matter what I did - random unexplained disconnects. I switched back to the old router and everything worked perfect so I knew it wasn't the Sonos system. I returned the D-Link and bought a Linksys and have been going trouble free for over 3 years. Have only rebooted a few times. I like other D Link products but my best success on routers has been with Linksys. YMMV.

I am equally baffled by the cable question, can you add more details?

Using Linksys here with a router and 2 unmanaged switches and a hub, couldn't be happier. Everything is gigabit and I can transfer files at 111 MB/s . As for your AV receiver I assume its network capable. If you can run a cat5e or cat 6 cable from your router down to your basement,from there you can use a switch or hub if you want to have more than just your receiver hooked to the internet.. I live in the Yukon and it gets -40 here and all I did was drill a hole in my wall and run the cable one the outside of the house. Goin on 3 yrs no problems.

Linksys is made by Cisco, Cisco is best in the world and used in major businesses. They practically develope routers.

What you also want to look into is a router that does 2.4 and 5 ghz simutaneously. You can get simu and switchable, meaning you run either 2.4 or 5ghz. Your movies and games run on the 5ghz and computers, VOIP etc on the 2.4ghz.

Gaming takes bandwidth, this would not slow down your internet if it is on 5 ghz.
I have a seperate Dlink Bridge hooked up to my AMP and it is hooked up wired to this wireless Bridge, which is connected to the Cisco wireless.
Dlink is good but get atleast the Extreme. Do not get Belkin, drops connections alot but cheap. If you can afford to spend the extra $50 it is better worth it.

I also share a hate for DLink products. I cringe when I get into working with a customer who wants to go VOIP and the closets are full of cheap DLink switches or other budget models. For that reason, I have no personal experience with thier home product line so I can't truly comment on the home line. However, my thoughts are that if they won't spend the R&D to make reliable business models, how could I expect them to be better on the residential line.

I'm also puzzled on the 2nd question. I assume you must have a cable modem from your ISP. Unfortunately my company lives in the fiber and copper world. Cable is the enemy. heheh. I haven't done networking on coax since my school daze where there was still,among other things, an aging VAX VMS network on token ring. Yup, I'm old.

Generally though, you would not 'normally' consider networking your house via coax. Also, you would not normally try to split your ISP's feed ahead of the modem and run two modems/routers. It may or not be technically possible but I doubt very much your ISP would support splitting it ahead of their supplied modem.

If that is what you mean, instead do as others have suggested. Buy a small Ethernet switch and then run Cat5 or 6 to everywhere you need a connection in your house. Wireless is indeed also a much improved option these days as well.

Cisco is NOT the best in the world, and they certainly don't put their high end routing gear into Linksys.

Personally, I'd still go with Linksys, Netgear, or Apple (if you already have Apple stuff) for home use.

2.4Ghz and 5Ghz have nothing at all to do with speed of the connection. It's all about interference and distance. 5Ghz will have less interference from microwaves, cordless phones, other people's wireless, but it will not extend as far as 2.4.

Unless you live in Kansas City (or only use the earliest version of wifi), I guarantee that your internet connection is slower than your wireless connection.

I hate DLink as well.

As far as upstairs/downstairs, like everyone else said, split the connection AFTER your router, not before. Use ethernet or wifi to get from upstairs to downstairs.

Guys, I never said I hate D Link products, just that their router did not work for me whereas the Linksys did. I have a D Link NAS that has served me well for several years - well worth the entry level price I paid for it.

Good to hear your opinion though as this is your area of expertise and I am just a home hobby hack!

Cheers,

Yeah, hate is awful strong. Let's just say mistrust.

My vote would be this Linksys E3200 refurb for $65 from Amazon:

Next choice, if you can up the budget a tad, would be this Asus RT-N56U for $108.

I got both of these recommendations from the excellent gadget review site, The Wirecutter.

I've been using this NETGEAR Wireless Router - N900 Dual Band Gigabit (WNDR4500) now for the past 3 years without a hic-up.

Mine is either this one, or one very similar. The only difference is mine has a silver stand. This one looks to be clear.

The range on mine is about 2 doors down the street. I took my I pad with me once to test how far I could use it.

Still my first choice.

I can't believe that this joke just never gets old!

STOP TEMPTING ME.

I have a Linksys E4200 that I like a lot. I have to research some sort of extender options though. The signal gets pretty weak at the furthest reaches.

I've been reading MaxPc for years shortly after it was Boot magazine. Usually pretty good reviews and some real world tests that i appreciate.
Their recent router recommendation was this latest Asus offering:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/%5Bprimary-term%5D/asus_rt-n66u_wi-fi_router_review

I personally own the Netgear 4500 to which this Asus is compared in the article. The Netgear 4500 has been pretty solid. It has a wireless client computer two floors up and at the far end of our house. Downlaod speeds are slightly slower than my wired computer which is to be expected (wired 4-6 mbps, wireless 2 floors up 1-3.5 mbps).

OK
I never said 5ghz was faster than 2.4

By putting Gaming and Video on 5 ghz, u run less interference with someone on a laptop on Youtube say down loading a video. Or whatever else downloading songs or Utorrenting. That's all

This way you get the highest bandwidth for gaming or Netfliks whatever on 5ghz.
There are routers that do this either 2.4 or 5ghz or for a few $$$ more will do both at the same time.

I did not use 5 ghz for distance as if he is in a normal average home on the same floor it will not be an issue for this regardless of 2.4 or 5ghz.

Secondly, You cannot split a digital signal, unless you want to buy some more electronics.

Not sure where you are but if your one HS with Cable then gonna need to goto their cable modem first anyways. From that go to a router, ( Dlink, Linksys, Cisco ) I don't care.
The only way your gonna run two or three Networks ( LAN ) within is through CAT6 or 5 or 4 or 3 or 5 or 5e I don't care.
You cannot go wireless to wireless with routers. If you need to extend or go wireless from the router to another you need a bridge or extender. Linksys WES610N 4-Port Dual-Band N Entertainment Bridge. See staples $79.99 they are. you can put this near your amp, tv, blu-ray using Catx and go wireless to the router on 5 ghz. with this bridge. There is no need to run Catx cabling.
Also, I don't care what the router is advertised at 1ghz or 500 mbs or 300mbs your internet connection unless you are fibre optics and paying 100's per month I would imagine is only around 80 mbs. so you are not going to reach the 300 mbs the router says it is capable of. And if the remote site puts out 1ghz uploads and you are the only one downloading your not going to get it.

As for Dlink, Linksys, Cisco, Netgear there all good. I have a Dlink 815 and my daughter is on Xbox live playing Black OPs or HAlo, Youtubin music on her iPhone and I am wireless with my tv watching Netflicks upstairs, my dlink router is in the basement and I never yet, had an issue.

axiom_man,

The only case where the less interference / additional bandwidth of 5GHz makes sense for streaming is if you have a file server on your local network that holds all your HD content and you stream from it wirelessly. Netflix streams (or any internet source) are coming to you over your internet connection, so their bandwidth is already constrained by the speed of the connection to your provider. Your wireless network (regardless of band) has at least 10x the throughput of your internet connection.

The primary real-world benefit of a simultaneous dual-band router is that you can run devices that only support 2.4GHz at the same time as devices that can use 5GHz. Older routers that supported both speeds would have to step down to only using 2.4GHz if there was only one device on the network that required it.

Word.

Whatever,

all I know is with A B G nics run only 2.4 speeds up to 54mbs.
With the Xbox and my tv ( Netflicks Smart TV ) I have a N Nic to run on 5ghz.
When I had only the G router on 2.4ghz and all my appliances, net flicks would time out, gaming was gittery and so on.

I now have a router that does simu 2.4 and 5 ghz.
The gaming system and Smart TV is on 5ghz everything else runs on 2.4ghz. I do not have issues anymore. as everything is not competing for the same bandwidth on 2.4

It's almost like having two seperate networks on one friggin router.
Gaming, watching netflick movies and downloading movies, youtube video,take up bandwidth.
So if everything is on the same bandwidth then you going to share and compete. Divide them up

Class of 2006! Woo hoo!!!

Not entirely true. I'm using bridge mode on my 2nd floor Lynksis router to maintain the same subnet being dished out by my basement located ISP provided router/modem. I wasn't getting a good signal on other floors from my basement utility room. It just took some digging in Google to find how to set it up appropriately.

Respectfully, this is also not true. However, since we are talking residential services, I'll agree it's not easily done with anything you are going to find at Future Shop type stores.

Agreed.
But now I feel like I'm bashing Axiom Man. Please don't take it that way as it's not my intent. You just happen to hit the topic I do for a living.

One other solution is to use some type of powerline ethernet adapters. The previous gen is so-so but it's much faster than noisy wifi. I've used Netgear ones for a few years with some success. Works better if they don't have to jump a transformer. I have single and quad port versions. I use the quad in my AV rack to support my Wii/Wii U, PS3, Tivo, Denon 3310, Slingbox, Roku, etc. You can also use these things to truly extend your Wifi. Use 2 of them and just think of them as a long CAT5 cable. This is opposed to a wifi repeater that does extend your wifi by repeating the signal. Bear in mind that in this case, wifi speeds are cut in half because repeating the signal puts you in half duplex mode.

http://www.netgear.com/home/products/powerline-and-coax/

There's the new G.hn versions which should ship this year. These take advantage of the 'theoretical' max of 1Gbps, real world is about 400Mbps taking overhead/attenuation into account.

http://www.homegridforum.org/content/pages.php?pg=news_press_releases_item&id=192

Thank you guys for all of your help.

Sorry I confused some of you on my second question, what I meant is I have a cable cord down in my basement connected to my DVR box. I have Cox Cable and Cox Internet. I didn't know if I could split that coaxial cable in a two way splitter for one to go to my DVR and the other to my modem (which will be by my DVR) downstairs or not?

Once again, thank you for your suggestions and help, I appreciate it!

You can split the coax, it's fine.

Just for reference , you can not have 2 modems on one coax unless you are paying your provider for more than one ip address.
Each modem has its own mac address that the CO uses to identify
it . This is why we use a router.

Hence , the sentence, " If you need to extend or go wireless from the router to another you need a bridge or extender."
Same, thing just your buying a router and converting it, switching it's options to a Bridge. Whynot just pay leas and buy the bridge in 5ghz

And yes, if eveything is on 5ghz then everything is competing for bandwidth. And No, 2.4ghz is not there just for backwards compatibilties.

Dude, you're being kind of argumentative.

I'm calmer than you are, dude.

I'LL SHOW YOU WHO'S CALM, YOU HORRIBLE PEOP...ahem.

Nope.
My basement wifi router is feeding my second floor wifi router via wireless just fine. There is no bridge required in the middle. In my case "bridging" refers to the feature that allows the passthrough of DHCP from the original router and all devices are on the same network.

I realize you are speaking of a different thing. A bridge to connect two routers. However, your first sentence said in a blanket statement that a router can't go to another router wirelessly and that is just not true.

I just didn't want him to think his options were limited.

Why am I using a more expensive router instead of a bridge? Because I needed to extend the signal up to the third floor and I already owned it, thus making it the cheaper solution.

I am thinking about getting the one below in the link from Monoprice in Feb $42 bucks only, and upgrade from the Netgear RangeMax WPN824v2 i have now that is 8 years old. What do you think about it? I am using a Motorola SB5101 N Surfboard Modem is this going to be a problem for the Monoprice Router? My modem handles 38 Mbps Download and 30 Mbps upstream. My speed is like 18 Mpbs down and I think like 4-5 Mpbs upload from Charter Cable. I need to test it and see the speed to be sure. I dont want to be a guinea pig with Monoprice has been good to me and should stand behind the product. My router has been dropping alot lately and there is some many more devices running wirelessly on my router now it is crazy. I think it is slowing things down. What are your thoughts?


http://www.monoprice.com/products/produc...=1&format=2

Sorry, no experience with that brand.

Me either.
I tend to stick with good brands and good reviews. Too many times friends have opted for cheaper computer parts and they paid for what they got; lesser quality/features they didn't realize they would want or need, lesser performance or shorter equipment life.

I got this Medialink wireless router last September, for $50, to extend my wireless network. Very popular on Amazon (4520 reviews). Works fine for me.

Finally upgrade to the Netgear R6300. I love it so far. Nice interface and strong signal. Real fast speeds.

That's the one I ended up with when my D-Link started giving me wireless grief. It seems to be doing well so far. Did you end up with the v2 with the USB 3.0 port? Mine ended up being v1, so only USB 2.0.

As a fan of DD-WRT and Tomato firmware replacements for routers, I always look for something I can flash that on. I'm currently using ASUS routers (right now my main router is a RT-N66U). I needed something with QoS support so I can carve off some dedicated bandwidth for my VoiP phone. I'm using the Tomato firmware with this and it's extension companion (an ASUS RT-N16).

The Tomato firmware is incredibly flexible. Far superior to anything I've seen in a commercial home router. I have it set up for dynamic DNS and have an Open VPN server on it so I can get home when abroad.

No sure on the USB port. I think it is a V2 with a 3.0. I will check.