Best Wireless Router - Comcast Blast

[vfpeter]

Recently I upgraded my Internet Service to Comcast Blast. In wired mode I get up to 65-70 mbps. However, in wireless I only get 10-14 mbps. I sat in the same room next to the router and still got the same results.

These are my devices:

• 
  Modem : Motorola Surfboard SB6121
  Router : Linksys E2500

Both the times I uses my dell laptop (in wired and wireless mode)

Although I do have multiple streaming devices and other wifi devices, when I was testing the only thing that was being used was my home security system.

I am thinking that getting a new router like Asus RT-AC68U Dual-band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit will improve my wifi.

I need a second opinion before I invest $220 in the new router.

Thanks,
Peter.

 

[RealBeast]

Stop and really think this out before you buy.

The AC68U is an amazing router, best in class AC, N, and G wireless -- but that all depends on your adapters, you cannot use AC without an AC adapter and are stuck at G speeds if any devices connect as G. Also, network interference is a huge issue unless you live out in the sticks. In other words the 68U will only improve your speeds under *some* conditions.

Download the free home version of the wireless analyzer inSSIDer from HERE and run it look under the network tab and see what other networks are around at 2.4 and 5GHz by channel and signal strength. What results?

If your 5GHz channels are free and 2.4GHz is crowded, you may do just as well with a far cheaper ASUS RT-N56U, assuming that your adapters work with 5GHz.

 

[bill001g]

I fully agree with realbeast. Even though I hate linksys routers because of the "cisco connect" cloud configuration crap the router performs well once you have it configured.

The router you have should perform much better than you are getting. Likely it is interference but it could be a older nic card in the PC also.

 

[vfpeter]

Thanks Guys. I am sort of software techie, so this is something that I have not dared to venture into much till now. So please pardon my ignorance.

I have a new Dell Laptop Inspiron 15 3521. Doing a system search, I found that wireless adapter is - Dell Wireless 1705 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHZ)

I also downloaded the inSSIDer app and ran it on my laptop. I could see lot of my neighbors routers in the list.

The following are the things I observed for my router:

• 
  Channel 6
  Link Score 71
  802.11 n
  Co-Channel 9
  Overlapping 3
  Signal -53 dBm
  Max Rate 144
  Security WPA2-Personal

Also, I did not see anything in the 5 GHz band graph. All the routers (including mine) were in 2.4 GHz band graph.

I am not sure what to do next. Any suggestions is appreciated.

Thanks,
Peter.

 

[bill001g]

The reason you cannot see 5g is your wireless adapter is only 2.4 so it can not see the 5g band.

What you want to check is the graph and see is there are fewer people on channel1 or channel 11 than on channel 6. You could I suppose just blindly try those 2 channels and see if it improves.

It is strange you can not get more traffic though this connection. The card is working with 2x2 mimo on the strongest signal for one channel..ie 20mhz. This means in theory you should be able to push 144m. Your signal is very strong so it almost has to be interfernce

 

[vfpeter]

I see only one on channel 1. There are more than five on channel 6 and three on 11. I will change to channel 1 and see if that does the trick.

 

[vfpeter]

ok, I changed the channel to 1 and restarted the router. But it does not make sense to me.

I see improvement in inSSIDer stats. See below:
Channel 1
Link Score 80
802.11 n
Co-Channel 5
Overlapping 0
Signal -49 dBm

But something strange happened. Now when I see the list of outers, all of them that were on 6 along with me have not magically changed to 1. No one is on channel 6 now.

When I ran speedtest, I am now getting just 4 Mbps.

How could the other networks change channel to 1 when I changed mine to 1?

 

[vfpeter]

Now when I changed to channel 11, the rest of the routers on 1 followed me to 11. I am sitting 2 feet from my router and my wifi speed if only 12 Mbps.

When I use wired connection, I get 56 Mbps.

I cannot understand why such a degradation when switching to wifi.

 

[bill001g]

They are likely using 40mhz channels....ie they use 1 and 6. 6 is the worst one to try in most cases. People either use 1 & 6 or 6 & 11. This is why so many people are going to 5g because of the competition.

The next thing to try is a dual band card for your laptop. A USB one is going to be simpler but there are youtube videos that show how to replace the internal card if you want to go that way. This should let you try out the 5g bands and hope to get better speeds. I really don't think it is your router but if you were to replace it you will want the 5g option in your laptop anyway. 5g does not penetrate walls as well. This is good and bad it reduces the distance it goes in your house but it also reduces the amount of interference from neighbors by even more.

 

[vfpeter]

Thanks Bill.

I think I will try out your suggestion of using a Dual Band USB adapter. Since I might need couple of them, I do not want to invest in the top of the line. I will buy one and test it out.

I found this one for $30

D-Link DWA-171 Wireless AC Dual Band Adapter IEEE 802.11ac, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n USB 2.0 Up to 150Mbps (2.4GHz) or 433Mbps (5GHz) Wireless Data Rates WPA2.

On another note, I did forget to mention that I do have a signal extender. So I should be able to move it around to get better signal with 5g band.