[SOLVED] (looking to upgrade) Best Router / Modem combo? (separate sytems)

[Atevoh]

Hello all,

I am currently looking to upgrade my router and modem as they are both on their way out after a good 4 years of usage, right now I have a Netgear R7000 AC1900 router and a CM700 modem. I don't mind sticking to Netgear but if there are other options that are more recommended i would love to expand my horizons. I live in a family home with three people who are all heavy internet users, we currently have Cox's 300 download and 30 upload package, most of our hardware is wired in but stuff like smart phones and TVs are wireless and in the case of the TV are bit far from the router and have a couple walls to go through. I would like a router that has an extremely solid WiFi band but also has features that could help me, who is an avid gamer. I have heard that "gaming" routers are mostly filler with their features and what they provide is not worth the cost, but if there is a router that is a nice in-between that provides good signal while having things like proper QoS that would be awesome. Of course i'd also like a modem to go with so if you guys have any idea on which two to choose i would love to hear your thoughts! Preferably would like to keep the total below $500 but if for a little more we get big improvements willing to venture out. Thank you so much.

 

[bill001g]

The modem you would have to see what is on your ISP supported list. Modems do not actually do much they convert from docsis to ethernet. The version of docsis used by your ISP depends on what they support as well as how fast the connection. Upgrading to say a docsis 3.1 device even if your ISP allowed it would not do much if your ISP is using docsis 3.0 for the plan you purchase.

You are not going to find some magic router that gets massively better wifi converge. The distance the signal goes is based on transmit power and the government regulates that. Almost all router transmit at the maximum power. It generally is your end device that is the problem since many of those do not use full power.

You are correctly gaming routers are mostly a scam to get more money from gamers who are too lazy to bother learning about QoS. All they have is some preconfigured rules that only know certain games.

Still QoS does nothing if you are not fully utilizing your internet connection. If someone was say downloading huge files constantly it would have a impact but most other traffic will not have any affect on games. You also have to be very careful even turning on the QoS feature when you have a fast internet connection. To run QoS the CPU needs to see all the data even if it does nothing with it other than the NAT. This will cap most routers in the 250mbps range and will be even worse with complex QoS rules. Routers to get high speed have offloaded the NAT support so the CPU does not have to be involved.

So first you need to have a actual issue which will be hard on a 300mbps internet connection. If you are overloading the connection you then need a device that can run QoS and still pass 300mbps of traffic. This will likely be some kind of pc device.

Pretty much QoS on a consumer router is really only something you would use if you had a rather slow internet connection. Say 50mbps. That with mulitple people you could overload and a consumer router could paritally do something about it.

I see nothing wrong with what you have. Your end device would have to support fancy stuff like wifi6 or 4x4 mimo to even get any advantage to a new router

I hope you are not playing online games on wifi. There is no fix to that problem.

 

[Atevoh]

The modem you would have to see what is on your ISP supported list. Modems do not actually do much they convert from docsis to ethernet. The version of docsis used by your ISP depends on what they support as well as how fast the connection. Upgrading to say a docsis 3.1 device even if your ISP allowed it would not do much if your ISP is using docsis 3.0 for the plan you purchase.

You are not going to find some magic router that gets massively better wifi converge. The distance the signal goes is based on transmit power and the government regulates that. Almost all router transmit at the maximum power. It generally is your end device that is the problem since many of those do not use full power.

You are correctly gaming routers are mostly a scam to get more money from gamers who are too lazy to bother learning about QoS. All they have is some preconfigured rules that only know certain games.

Still QoS does nothing if you are not fully utilizing your internet connection. If someone was say downloading huge files constantly it would have a impact but most other traffic will not have any affect on games. You also have to be very careful even turning on the QoS feature when you have a fast internet connection. To run QoS the CPU needs to see all the data even if it does nothing with it other than the NAT. This will cap most routers in the 250mbps range and will be even worse with complex QoS rules. Routers to get high speed have offloaded the NAT support so the CPU does not have to be involved.

So first you need to have a actual issue which will be hard on a 300mbps internet connection. If you are overloading the connection you then need a device that can run QoS and still pass 300mbps of traffic. This will likely be some kind of pc device.

Pretty much QoS on a consumer router is really only something you would use if you had a rather slow internet connection. Say 50mbps. That with mulitple people you could overload and a consumer router could paritally do something about it.

I see nothing wrong with what you have. Your end device would have to support fancy stuff like wifi6 or 4x4 mimo to even get any advantage to a new router

I hope you are not playing online games on wifi. There is no fix to that problem.

From what i have gathered and talking to the people at Cox (my internet has been slow and dodgy but there were no reports of any outings in or near my house) they said my router and modem seem to be at the end of the their lifespan, so i am going to purchase a router and modem really regardless. Are you then saying that i should re-buy what i already had? I was looking at the XR500 and CM11000 combo, would that be worth it? Or would it be overkill? I dont really care about QoS if it's not needed, to your point i dont know really anything about it so im sure i wouldnt be able to use it to its full advantages. The answer is yes to my gaming devices being wired, any device that can be wired more or less in my household is, short of the TV.

 

[bill001g]

If the equipment you have actually works I might just leave it be. New equipment you always run the risk of it dying right after the warenty runs out.

Not sure what feature you feel those devices have that will help you. Unless you plan to upgrade your internet going docsis 3.1 will not give you any benefit is it highly likely the ISP will just run in as docsis 3.0 anyway. That router like many tries to get bigger "numbers" but that does not mean they are any faster. It is highly unlikely your equipment can run 4x4 mimo. They also use non standard data encoding that many devices also do not support. It is highly likely your end devices can not even use all the abilities of your current router.

That router has lots of features BUT because you have a fast internet connection you likely can not use them. Anything that requires the CPU to see the data will bottleneck the traffic. They may have fixed it but even the simple ability to see traffic utilization does not appear because all the traffic is bypassing the CPU and the CPU is what you asking for the reports but it can not see them

The big feature you can not use on that router is the VPN....there so called geo locating stuff. VPN will cap the speed on most routers to about 30mbps because it is so cpu intensive. That router does not have the encryption accelerator, there are only a tiny handful of routers that have vpn acceleration and they still cap out at about 200-250mbps.

So unless you are having some issue I would not replace your equipment. If the equipment is failing for some reason I would not go real expensive.

Wifi6e is coming "soon" and it should be one of the largest improvements in wifi in a long time. Not so much because of some new tech it is still wifi6, it is because of the massive new radio bandwidth the FCC allows. This means for a while at least you can share with your neighbors and not have everyone stomping on each others radio channels.

 

[Atevoh]

If the equipment you have actually works I might just leave it be. New equipment you always run the risk of it dying right after the warenty runs out.

Not sure what feature you feel those devices have that will help you. Unless you plan to upgrade your internet going docsis 3.1 will not give you any benefit is it highly likely the ISP will just run in as docsis 3.0 anyway. That router like many tries to get bigger "numbers" but that does not mean they are any faster. It is highly unlikely your equipment can run 4x4 mimo. They also use non standard data encoding that many devices also do not support. It is highly likely your end devices can not even use all the abilities of your current router.

That router has lots of features BUT because you have a fast internet connection you likely can not use them. Anything that requires the CPU to see the data will bottleneck the traffic. They may have fixed it but even the simple ability to see traffic utilization does not appear because all the traffic is bypassing the CPU and the CPU is what you asking for the reports but it can not see them

The big feature you can not use on that router is the VPN....there so called geo locating stuff. VPN will cap the speed on most routers to about 30mbps because it is so cpu intensive. That router does not have the encryption accelerator, there are only a tiny handful of routers that have vpn acceleration and they still cap out at about 200-250mbps.

So unless you are having some issue I would not replace your equipment. If the equipment is failing for some reason I would not go real expensive.

Wifi6e is coming "soon" and it should be one of the largest improvements in wifi in a long time. Not so much because of some new tech it is still wifi6, it is because of the massive new radio bandwidth the FCC allows. This means for a while at least you can share with your neighbors and not have everyone stomping on each others radio channels.

It is to the point where i feel i am experiencing issues, i am unable to get online on games that i used to have no issues, i have checked and its not the game servers, or my playstations. My wifi seems to be weaker than it was originally, and again i made sure it was not Cox. I think it is the fact that this router is on its way out. For a long time i had problems with updating firmware on my R7000, so much so i have to use a firmware from years ago, which leads me to believe i have some kind of hardware issue that newer firmwares do not mix well with.

I have to ask though, when you say i cant use a VPN, do you mean i cant use it through the whole router? Am i still able to use a VPN on individual devices? I do use ExpressVPN for work on my laptop, and i tried using the DNS settings given from ExpressVPN for the PS4 and they actually helped increase my download speed and made the game feel a bit more snappier. Would the DNS settings conflict with the geo filtering if i were to get the XR500?

If i decide to not spend a bag on a router and modem, what would you suggest in terms of a snappy router / modem that provides adequate wifi range while being able to handle all the throughput of an intense gamer, and two parents who are hardwired in and work entirely on their computers, as well as stream netflix throughout the night.

Sorry my questions are all over the place, i am just trying to cover all my bases to make the most informed decision possible. I really appreciate your help Bill.

 

[bill001g]

VPN works ok on a pc because almost all modern pc have the encryption instructions that help increase the speed. Also the cpu in a pc is massive compared to a router.

The restriction is only if you use the vpn on the router itself. I guess the reason I mention it is that seems to be their big selling point for the router. My first reaction was "what a bunch of crap". I use VPN on a router but you have to know the limitations and I only have some traffic using that router other goes directly to the main router.

If you wire your game machine to the router it really doesn't matter much. Games use almost no bandiwidth. Well under 1mbps. Netflix even on 4k uses only about 25mbps. So even with 2 people doing that you still have over 200mbps.

I guess if you feel there are hardware issues with your current equipment you would replace it. The number I recommend is 1200-1750. This matches the end equipment most people have (ie there are very few nic cards that have 4 antenna and no phone/tables) 802.11ac is very stable chipset so most the bugs fixed but I would stay with major manufactures.

 

[Atevoh]

VPN works ok on a pc because almost all modern pc have the encryption instructions that help increase the speed. Also the cpu in a pc is massive compared to a router.

The restriction is only if you use the vpn on the router itself. I guess the reason I mention it is that seems to be their big selling point for the router. My first reaction was "what a bunch of crap". I use VPN on a router but you have to know the limitations and I only have some traffic using that router other goes directly to the main router.

If you wire your game machine to the router it really doesn't matter much. Games use almost no bandiwidth. Well under 1mbps. Netflix even on 4k uses only about 25mbps. So even with 2 people doing that you still have over 200mbps.

I guess if you feel there are hardware issues with your current equipment you would replace it. The number I recommend is 1200-1750. This matches the end equipment most people have (ie there are very few nic cards that have 4 antenna and no phone/tables) 802.11ac is very stable chipset so most the bugs fixed but I would stay with major manufactures.

Yeah I've done a bit of research with using a VPN through the whole router so I know that wasn't the route to take for attempting to gain a network edge.

I think I might go with the XR500 and CM1000 only because I am actually probably going to upgrade our plan to gigablast (The 1GB internet package for Cox), which does require DOCSIS 3.1 and my current modem is DOCSIS 3.0 only. Im gonna buy it from best buy and worst case if the performance upgrades are not worth the investment I have 2 weeks to return it, at that point I think I will end up going with something like the R7000 AC1750 and the CM600/700.

Thank you so much for your time, you have been a big help! I'll let you know if i can see some improvements because i am gonna head to best buy before the end of the day.