What should I buy? What do I need? Router choosing problem. Please Help!

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prof080

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Aug 27, 2017
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Hello All,

I want to upgrade my home network. My girlfriend and me just got a new PCs. They both have gigabit LAN port but as it turned out my WiFi router is just 10/100. I want to buy a WiFi router with Gigabit capability to match the PCs performance.
My old router is a http://www.tp-link.com/no/products/details/TL-WR841ND.html . At that time when I bought it, it was supercool and fulfilled my needs without any question. The WR841's range is quite extraordinary. I live on the 4th floor, and I got signal not just from the ground floor, but in the whole street (~100 m). The firmware UI is simple what I like, and it is stable (I had to restart it only once in half a year). So I strongly trust in TP-Link products.

In other hand my technological armada is evolved, so I need a stronger device, with up to date features.

My minimum requirements:
Gigabit
Dual Band
802.11ac standard
USB port
Minimum 3 LAN port

Good to have:
External antennas (as an engineer I do not trust overintegrated things. Parts what need space those should get enough space)
Usable or just fancy android app 😀
Some kind of NAS-y options :)

Range is not an standpoint because I live in a small flat with maximum one wall blocking the signal.

I want to start a little home server. I would like to store some movies to streaming to phone, common software installers, etc.

Do I need an USB 3.0?
Does the USB 3.0 worth the extra money?
Can use a 2.5" 5400rpm HDD with standard USB 2.0? (I have a Sata to USB3 converter cable)

At last the most important thing!
My budget is around 100 USD. I gladly buy again a TP-Link product if it has the necessary properties. After a little research Asus is my second possible choice but I do not like the design they have and the mostly internal antennas.

Please tell me what should I buy. What to worth buying. I open for other brands if they are reasonable choices.

Thank you for your help!
 
Solution
B
You technically can use a USB drive on many routers but a router primary function is not to be a NAS so the performance does not compare to actual NAS units or even the simple file sharing used in a PC. It is mostly a marketing tool to sell it to someone who wants network storage but does not care a lot about the performance.

I would spend the $20 on a switch and wait on the router until you can really use it if you consider just a little over $100 expensive. Although you can likely find a router for a little less especially if you go to lesser known brands your requirement for network storage function means you need to spend more. This function performance is directly related to the CPU speed in the router and it pretty much is...
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What ISP speed do you have? If your ISP speed is 20Mbit then you are not being limited by the 100Mbit router. The gigabit ethernet on your PC is not relevant unless you have network storage. Even then, you could get a gigabit network switch for $20 ...
 
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My ISP speed is 50Mbit/s, but I have not got any problem with that 😀 My problem exactly is that if I want to copy a BD50 movie or a game to my girlfriend's PC the speed maxed out at 7-10 Mbyte/s. We use a folder as a Network Drive. I think our motherboards and storage device (7200rpm WDs, and M.2 SSDs) can handle much larger network speeds, but my router bottleneck it. So I decided to change it to a newer one.

I know I should buy a good quality USB3.0 flash drive, but I do not want to plug n pull n plug etc all the time. A good home network is more elegant way in my opinion 😀 This is what I think about an USB port on router. I will put on it some drivers, and elementary softwares in case of emergency windows reinstalls.
 
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  • ■7-12 MB/s is typical for 802.11n.
    ■802.11ac typically hits 25-35 MB/s.
So upgrading routers won't help much (it won't help at all if your devices don't support 802.11ac). Any wireless solution is going to force you to wait.


  • ■Most hard drives top out at around 150 MBs, although with a mix of large a small files you're more likely to see about 70 MB/s. For only small files the speed can drop to as low as 0.75 MB/s.
    ■SATA SSDs top out around 550 MB/s, about 200-300 MB/s for a mix of files. Only small files will copy at about 30-70 MB/s.
    ■Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) tops out at 12.5 MB/s. It can usually hit at least 10 MB/s.
    ■Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps) tops out at 125 MB/s. It can usually hit 100 MB/s, although the bottleneck usually ends up being the hard drive.
    ■USB 2.0 tops out around 40 MB/s. Realistic speeds I've seen are closer to 25-30 MB/s.
    ■USB 3.0 tops out around 150-200 MB/s. USB 3.0 itself can hit over 500 MB/s, but the bottleneck is the translation layer between USB and the drive. USB 3.0 drives with UASP can hit 300-400 MB/s (at least I haven't seen reports of anything faster).

So your best choices are:
 
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Thank you for the numbers, good to have such an informations.
I would like to buy a futureproof device, that is why I interested in 802.11ac standard. I do not like the idea to put another device on my desk 😀 It is already full of wires, and they catch every little dust particle.
So I want a fast home network (LAN), with a new futureproof device and no plus devices such as flash drives and switches.
What should I buy?
USB 3.0 router worth the extra money?
Which brand supports more this kind of "home server"? Streaming movie to laptop or phone etc.
Can I use my USB3.0 HDD as a storage connected to router?

Other peoples offer me this:
http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-5506_Archer-C9.html
It is a bit expensive for me 🙁 Do you know any alternatives?
 
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You technically can use a USB drive on many routers but a router primary function is not to be a NAS so the performance does not compare to actual NAS units or even the simple file sharing used in a PC. It is mostly a marketing tool to sell it to someone who wants network storage but does not care a lot about the performance.

I would spend the $20 on a switch and wait on the router until you can really use it if you consider just a little over $100 expensive. Although you can likely find a router for a little less especially if you go to lesser known brands your requirement for network storage function means you need to spend more. This function performance is directly related to the CPU speed in the router and it pretty much is you get what you pay for.

If you can drop the requirement for a USB attached hard driver you likely can get by with most ac1200 routers. The 1900 you list requires the end devices to have 3 antenna which is not common, most portable devices only have 2. Next it requires the device to support a non standard 802.11n protocol on the 2.4g band. Some vendors like apple have said they will not support it unless it is part of the official standard.
 
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Solution

Then I would suggest waiting. Get a USB 3.0 flash drive and/or a cheap 802.11ac router to tide you over.

The FCC opened up the 60 GHz band last year (64-71 GHz), and it's been standardized as 802.11ad. I'd expect WiFi devices using it to start showing up next year or maybe even later this year. Expected data rate is 6.7 Gbps. (That's the protocol data rate. There's a ton of error corrected added on, so real-world data transfer speeds are typically about 1/3 the protocol data rate. Which is still more than twice as fast as Gigabit ethernet.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#Protocol

Can I use my USB3.0 HDD as a storage connected to router?
Click to expand...
You probably want a NAS if you're going to do that - network attached storage. The USB 3.0 ports on most routers max out at around 20-50 MB/s. You have to get to the $200-$400 routers to approach Gigabit speeds.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas
 
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