Comcast Xfinity Dual-band Modem Setup and Juicing

[chinesepug]

Hey guys, I’m a complete noob with this so I could use some help. I recently bought an ARRIS/Motorola SB6141 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem and Asus RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router for my Comcast Xfinity up to 75 mbps internet. First of all, would this Asus router be overkill or do these two combinations work well? Also, I have a Dell Wireless 1502 802.11 b/g/n adaptor for my desktop pc. Is this wireless adaptor good enough or should I get an updated adapter? I read online and it said this:

“Now if you improve your connection you will get proportionally increased speed unless you have -

1. 802.11a/b/g router (your speed won't increase at all)
2. A lot of activity on the radio channels in your area.
3. Your laptop has 802.11a/g wifi card
For 1 & 2 buy a multiple antenna 802.11n/ac router.
For 3 buy a 802.11n/ac wifi dongle .

Second is that I want to be able to “juice” or get double the download speed from what I’ve read from this site http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/how-to-set-up-dual-band-wifi-and-juice-your-downloads/

Everything after "Two-router setup" from that site confused me.

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It suggests, "Configure your main router as you normally would, giving it a unique SSID and selecting 5GHz-only operation where appropriate. Generally this'll be under a wireless settings menu, but different manufacturers put it in different places"

So is my main router the RT-N66U or the Motorola SB6141?

If I’m getting up to 75 Mbps with Comcast Xfinity soon, how will I get double that so I can download torrents at double the speed? If I understand correctly, must I get a cheap additional wireless Belkin router to get double the speed? If so, any recommendations on a reliable cheap wireless router besides a Belkin? And where do I connect the cheap Belkin router to? I also read that I can assign which devices go to the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, but that’s where I get confused. How do I know which wireless devices will connect to which Ghz spectrum? Is there a way to manage that and should I? I definitely don’t want my torrent download speeds to be affected by other wireless devices or when I try to browse online or stream HD videos online. Is there a way to separate my torrent downloads and me streaming HD videos online so I don’t get a lot of buffering?
Also, it is true that I’m “sharing” half of my network with my neighbors using Comcast Xfinity? An ATT Uverse rep told me that half of my Comcast Xfinity internet would be “secured” but the other half wouldn’t be. Is there a way to “secure” the remaining half so that people don’t mooch off my network?
I used inSIDER to get this graph and I currently have ATT Uverse:









It looks like I can only view the 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Will I be able to view the 5 Ghz spectrum once I install my new Asus Router? Finally, which channels should I use for which modems and how do I configure that? Should I wait until I can see the 5Ghz spectrum, and at that point, how would I go about choosing and configuring which channels go to which router?
Also, what’s a good score or signal strength? I don’t know what -57 dBm means. Should Overlapping always be 0?
So assuming that I need my Asus RT-N66U, Motorola SB6141, and an Additional cheap Belkin router which router should have the 2.4Ghz versus the 5Ghz and how would I configure it?

Should I take this guy’s advice from Amazon in changing from 20Hz to 40 Hz?

“The RT-N66U has the option to change the bandwidth for a given band. By default, I found that both the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands were set to a signal bandwidth of 20Hz. The reason this is a major issue is that at 20Hz, there is simply not enough throughput on the given band to allow for this router to hit its full speed potential. So I went ahead and set the router to use 40Hz bandwidth for each band”

Also, should I set up the VPN that comes with the ASUS modem? I read online that free VPN’s are worthless and that only paid ones that don’t log your activity are worth buying? How secure is the ASUS VPN and does it log my activities?
Any other important advice is much appreciated since I’m a complete noob. I will get Comcast next Saturday, should I get the installation guy to help me set it up?

Maybe I should get 802.11ac adapter for my desktop PCI card bc beamforming might not be compatible with the ASUS?

 

[bill001g]

You are all over the place on this with way to many questions to even think to address.

You have found some very bad information in some ways. Sure there is more bandwidth on the 5g band and there is less interference. What they failed to mention is 5g is much more easily blocked by walls and floors in a house. So IF you get the same signal level you can say 5g will run faster BUT that also assume there is less interference on 5g than 2.4g.

The article you link is written very badly because it implies that you just add another router and somehow that magically makes you speed higher. No matter how hard you try a PC will only use 1 radio connection.

The changing from 20mhz - 40mhz again completely ignores the interference issues. Many times you will actually get better speed running at 20mhz with no interference than running on 40mhz with interference. On the 2.4g band there is only a total of 60mhz of bandwidth so it is impossible for 2 people to run 40mhz without interfering.

The first thing you need to try is see how strong your signals are currently. Most fairly current phones have dual band radios in them. You can get a number of apps (inssider you have pay for) that will show you the signal levels and all the interfering neighbors.

You will have to replace your router to use 802.11ac and only the very high end ones have beamforming. It is still inconclusive how much benefit beamforming is in a home environment, many times the signal is actually bouncing off walls and going though doors rather than penetrating the walls directly.

If you feel that you can get strong enough coverage on the 5g band and you do not have too many neighbors running 802.11ac it might be worth buying a new nic card. You can get 802.11ac and it will work with your current router. Be aware 802.11ac has the same issue as the 20mhz-40mhz does. 802.11ac uses 80mhz and there are only 2 blocks of 80mhz on the 5g band. If they ever get the newest type of 802.11ac out it actually uses 160mhz so 1 person can eat all the 5g bandwidth.

 

[chinesepug]

I agree, that article was badly written . thanks bill for taking the time to answer this though

it sounds like it's just best to leave the Asus router settings at default right? You think it's overkill to even use this router?

You're right, the only way to know is to test it out when the Comcast guy installs everything

 

[bill001g]

You need a router of some kind and that asus is one of the more popular ones. It should get be fine until you decide you need 802.11ac.

Wireless is very hard to even predict how well it will work since the house you put it in makes far more difference than the routers themselves. If possible I would try to get the modem/roiuter installed in the same room as the machine you want the top speed on. This way you can use etherent to get the maximum speed and not have wireless to even worry about.

 

[chinesepug]

appreciate it man, thanks