Need new router and don't know what to get.

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jthornton

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Sep 12, 2013
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I'm looking for a good router at a reasonable price. I don't want to be spending $400+ on a router if at all possible.

My current setup is that I have 500 MBps internet and I have a lot of people in the house sharing wifi. We do a fair amount of streaming both within the network and from the internet. Right now my router is very hit-and-miss. Sometimes it works (albeit poorly) and sometimes it just drops signal.

I connected to my modem directly and was getting 400+ in speed, but on wifi (only 4 ft away from the router) I dropped to 1 MBps. The wifi is *almost* unusable and I can't seem to get it working any better. I have tried doing a full reset on the router and it hasn't improved.

I know that it is not the best location to have it in my basement (two floors above it), but I can't change that because of the way the house is built, it is not an easy task to get my wired modem upstairs.

I have POE setup which I tried using. MODEM > ROUTER > POE > Wireless AP but that just created a serious bottle neck that it didn't work properly. I upgraded my POE to TP-Link AC2000 adapters and that gave me better POE performance but still not good enough to run the wireless AP off of it.

I need some suggestions please on how I can set this hardware up to give me reliable performance.

Can anyone please help with suggestions? I'm specifically looking for the specific router that I can buy that will give me:

- Good range so that it can reach the top floor.
- Good speed so that AC computers can connect with good speeds
- Reliable signal that won't keep dropping intermittently
- Gigabit port so that I can hard-wire my server to it
 
Solution
failboat
Wireless mesh will do a lot better. Considering that powerline is doing so poorly, IDK if a newer one would do better. The new gen ones are much faster.

The only good solution is running ethernet. Even with ethernet you need high end access points to get 400Mbs+ and high end clients. Wiring fixed devices is recommended.
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I think it'll be important to know what you have right now to better tailor our answers to your situation. Keep in mind that there are some WIFI 6 (802.11ax) routers on the horizon. These will likely be expensive at first but should start becoming available in more general consumer friendly prices by the end of 2019.

I think you are mistaking POE for powerline adapter. Powerline adapters are very dependent on the wiring in your house, they send data over the power lines in your house. POE is the opposite situation. Instead of sending data over power lines it's adding power to the data lines to be used by the device at the end of that cable.

In the best circumstances, two outlets on the same breaker/circuit a short distance apart, you'll get the maximum rated speed over the powerlines with a powerline adapter, but in most cases you'll see substantially less.To improve performance you might try switching to different outlets on one or both sides of the to see if the throughput improves.

To get better speeds with the hardware you have you'll want to run an ethernet cable. It may be good enough to run a cable from the basement with your modem up to somewhere on the first floor where you can then use your powerline adapter to reach upstairs. This might improve the transfer speeds through the powerline adapter as you can get the two devices closer together electrically. It may not work.

I recently looked at having my house wired for ethernet. I was quoted $75/drop (every run of ethernet) If you only need one line run from the basement to upstairs then that could be a worthwhile expense. But, my home is only a single level.

As far as a hardware purchase, I think you need to consider what Kanewolf is saying very seriously. For a large house a series of $100 APs is going to be loads better than a single $500 wireless router.
 
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Wireless mesh will do a lot better. Considering that powerline is doing so poorly, IDK if a newer one would do better. The new gen ones are much faster.

The only good solution is running ethernet. Even with ethernet you need high end access points to get 400Mbs+ and high end clients. Wiring fixed devices is recommended.
 
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Solution
Yes, you are correct. I was incorrectly using the POE acronym. It is Powerline Adapters I was referring to.

I just bought the AC2000 adapters that I have and while there was much better throughput with my server, that is the only thing connected now. I didn't try to make any AP's connect tot he Powerline adapter because the previous ones did so poorly.

My house is not that big. It's about 40' x 25' and two floors plus a basement. So, I don't think that the *size* of the house is so much the issue. Especially since I went to the basement with my laptop and connected to the router from 4ft away (wifi) and still only got like 1.5 MBps. This is what led me to think that I needed a new router.
 
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It's 99% chance the powerline. I'd test the AP connected directly to the router. You can play with outlets as well on those things. Two outlets on the same rail will perform better. Rails are normally every other single breaker on a 220V service. Distance matters as well. Try the AP on the middle floor.
 
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Sorry, I think I miscommunicated something. The connection is as follows:

CABLE > MODEM > ROUTER

From there I have different connections:

Wired
Wifi
Powerline Adapters

So the router is connected directly to the modem and the wife 4ft away is only getting me 1.5 MBps.

The router is Linksys EA9200
 
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Are you using the same SSID as the AP? Are you positive you're testing the wifi on the EA9200? That's a new router it should be much better. Try measuring wireless congestion from a phone app. Test the AP in the basement. See if you can get something working. If the wired is good it will pass bandwidth to the AP.
 
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I don't have a wireless AP anymore, I only have the wireless router.

Yes, I'm sure it is the EA9200-4C

I bought it on 04-16-2016 for $260.

I thought I was buying a good router but it doesn't seem like it. That's why I'm coming here for advice this time.
 
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factory reset + update only configure basic NAT + wireless. a few wrong settings on routers and they can get really slow. 1Mbs is really bad. check all the antennas and make sure they are screwed in all the way.
 
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I will check the antennas but I have already done a factory reset on it. The only thing that I configure on them is static IP's based on MAC addresses. I need to ensure that my server and printer remain on the same IP.

factory reset + update only configure basic NAT + wireless. a few wrong settings on routers and they can get really slow. 1Mbs is really bad. check all the antennas and make sure they are screwed in all the way. [/quotemsg]

 
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