Modem/router purchase help

[subversive27]

My old modem/router is from 2007. It's a Westell Versalink 327W. It's at the end of its lifespan. I have 6 Mbps AT&T DSL. We do connect all of our devices wirelessly.

We typically have 3 computers connected at any given time. We play online games and watch a lot of streaming HD. We do have lag issues. I don't know if that's because the router is old or if it's because the router has always been that way.

So, now I am shopping for a new modem/router. From what I understand, N is the newer technology. I really don't know much about networking.

What do I need without going overboard? I was thinking about a Netgear N300 for $90, but I also saw a dual band Netgear N600 for $130. Will I see a difference in performance compared to the Westell? ( I am assuming I will also need to purchase a better wireless adapter for my gaming computer to take advantage of a better router. Mine is an older Ralink USB. ) Would the N300 do me just fine? Could I go even cheaper?

 

[RealBeast]

You should see an improvement in wireless speed if you upgrade all your device adapters to N -- if you use any old G adapters it will default your speed to the same as G.

Dual band is useful if you have a lot of interference from other nearby networks or devices on the 2.4GHz band. Your wireless adapters would also need to support the 5GHz band to make dual band worthwhile.

With most any wireless you will have lag issues if using more than one device for gaming and/or video streaming. N wireless may help but will not solve this issue completely in most cases.

How far from the access point are your gaming and streaming devices, and what type of construction/walls/floors involved?

 

[bill001g]

Unless you mean you stream HD movies between machines inside your house your most likely issue is you are using all your bandwidth.

You seldom get the stated bandwidth from the ISP. You can easily eat 3m with just a single HD stream some are even higher. Upgrading your network would be a first step but I suspect you will be upgrading your internet connection when it does not resolve it.

 

[subversive27]

You should see an improvement in wireless speed if you upgrade all your device adapters to N -- if you use any old G adapters it will default your speed to the same as G.

Dual band is useful if you have a lot of interference from other nearby networks or devices on the 2.4GHz band. Your wireless adapters would also need to support the 5GHz band to make dual band worthwhile.

With most any wireless you will have lag issues if using more than one device for gaming and/or video streaming. N wireless may help but will not solve this issue completely in most cases.

How far from the access point are your gaming and streaming devices, and what type of construction/walls/floors involved?

It's a small, one-story house ( 1500 sq ft ) with standard drywall. The computer and PS3 I use for gaming/streaming are on the other side of the house from the access point. It's not practical to have the access point closer since it's through a phone line. There is a laptop for regular web surfing and some limited video watching at the access point.

 

[RealBeast]

As bill says, doing anything while streaming HD video uses a big chunk of your bandwidth and will really increase latency for gaming, so you may have two bottlenecks at present. Your wireless is probably the worst of the two, but even with good wireless you may not have excellent speed, although I would expect a big improvement over the present.

You can test the ATT bandwidth adequacy by connecting the PS3 and a computer to stream video at the same time using Ethernet cables. That would take the wireless out of the equation and show you if upgrading the wireless alone will meet your needs. While a time consuming exercise, its the cheapest way to know for sure.

As for the wireless, if you want to go with a single N wireless router, I would go with an ASUS RT-N66U and use 2.4GHz for one use and the 5GHz band for the other, so gaming on one and video streaming on the other. This means new wireless adapters on at least some of your devices.

You also have the option of adding an additional access point on the other side of the house. That way you can run the two main uses on different non-overlapping radio channels to maximize the speed of each. You could continue to use your current modem/router and just add the AP (a router configured as an AP actually) to it.

It needs either an Ethernet cable to the other side of the house or a pair of powerline adapters. The newest Zyxel PLA5205 kit works very well but costs a lot more than the older slower adapters and I know that you don't want to spend too much on this. While it probably sounds a little crazy, it's the best way to get a really good wireless signal throughout the house and I've used it for many clients and every one has been very happy with the result.

Another budget buster that would be excellent is a pair of ASUS RT-AC66U routers, one at the DSL modem and the second at the other side of the house in media bridge mode.

I know that some of these are out of your budget, but it is basically all possible options so you can make an informed choice.