Selecting New Router for Frontier

[ryoncantrell]

Hi there,

I've been having awful luck with ISP's and Frontier's been the worst. It's a long story but the important thing is that today when a tech came I was told that for my apartment I should get a Triband router instead of using Frontier's dualband.

As of right now I have 100/100 speeds but with Frontiers router that will sometimes drop to 40 speeds on Ethernet. Wireless runs anywhere from 0-100.

The tech said that using a Triband would help with getting stronger signal for wifi, but they also said it should help with the rubber banding and agonizingly slow download speeds on my girlfriend and I's Ethernet desktops. I wanted to make sure this was true and get some suggestions on a router to hopefully make it so I never have to call customer service again .

We currently have...
-2 desktop Ethernet
-1 printer Ethernet
-3 laptops 5g
-2 phones 5g
-1 smart TV 5g
-1 Amazon Echo Dot 2.4g
-1 Ion wifi camera 2.4g
-1 Roku 2.4g

Price range would be 200-250

 

[bill001g]

Tri-band just adds another radio. It does not improve the coverage or range. It would only increase the speed to some small extent because you could assign your different devices to different radios to reduce the competition. In most cases the bottleneck is the internet itself rather than the competition for radios.

The other flaw in the extra radio theory is it assumes you have no competition from neighbors for radio bandwidth. Each 5g radio uses a block of 4 channels and there are only a total of 9 channels in most countries. So a single tri-band router uses almost all the radio bandwidth so your almost guarantee interference.

In most cases your end devices only have 2 antenna so buying routers that can run 4 feeds (ie 4x4 mimo) does not help because the end device can not use it.

For most people a dual band router that runs at 1200 or 1450 is best. Even 1450 uses 3 antenna/feeds so not a lot of device can use it.

I will assume you have a modem from frontier other wise you are going to have to get a router from their list that has a modem built in that supports their system.

 

[ryoncantrell]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for the speedy reply. Yes we have a big ugly box hidden in the wall with all the cables coming out of it with a Frontier logo on it, I'm assuming this is the modem which the Frontier router is attached to.

I'm not surprised I've gotten misinformation again about how to fix issues with Frontier's internet. I'm glad I asked before making a large purchase that wouldn't solve these issues! Neighbor interference must be very prevalent because it is what both Comcast and Frontier have claimed to be the issue in the apartment. So I should look at an AC1450 router if all my devices are compatible, and if not then I should look at any AC1200? We don't do any wireless gaming and we don't have any 4k TV's yet. We don't have cable so we only stream on the TV's.

 

[bill001g]

Those wireless speeds will match most your end devices. I would stay with the larger brands asus,tplink,linksys,netgear. Avoid some of the smaller brands like belkin and buffalo. Mostly you get better support from the larger brands