Wireless Networking: Nine 802.11n Routers Rounded Up

[baliwae]

it seems unfair Tplink positioned like that. tomshardware test results seem to be done within a short distance between access point and client. with the default transmit power is set to high power, of course the bandwidth result will be fluctuates. try changing the transmit power set to low or medium for a short distance and it must be very stable and better results.

this proof:
http://toko.baliwae.com/images/ttplink-tl-wr1043n-set-middle-power-jarak-dekat.jpg

http://toko.baliwae.com/images/tplink-tl-wr741n-150mbps-high-stabil.jpg

 

[Guest]

No mention of IPv6 support on any of these routers? IPv4 addresses will run out "soon"--perhaps as early as fall 2010. Do any of them support IPv6 out of the box? This should be a required feature for the next reviews.

 

[HeadScratcher7]

I recently bought the Cisco E3000 (aka Linksys WRT610N) and I'm having serious problems with it. The wireless connection to the internet is rock solid, but it's blocking local file sharing. No help from Cisco as yet. I'm planning to add an external HDD to it and see if that stabilizes things. A few others have complained of the same problem on the Cisco forums, but I would've expect more if the problem really is wide spread. Maybe they all just return it? Or maybe only a few units are in some way flawed. Strange.

This thread covers the whole story:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25722-41-hook-wireless-router-2wire-router#bas

Here's the snippet covering my connection speeds:
The E3000 seems flawless so far for connection with WPA/WPA2. Before I only had WEP so this is a nice improvement in security. At the back of the house I was getting 54 Mb/s on my old laptop's G modem. Now using a Cisco AE1000 USB dual band wireless-N connected to my laptop via its dock, I get 48 to 216 Mbs with an average of 81 Mbs on the 5 Ghz band when connecting to the E3000 router -and not a single disconnect so far (I used to get 3 or 4 per day).

 

[HeadScratcher7]

Oh, and with the E3000 I actually have a better connection with the 2.4Ghz band. I generally average 104 to 117 Mb/s.

 

[feanorgem]

It's sad how incomplete this review is. Normally Tom's is useful to people that care about performance but a blank article would be just as informative. These are routers, how well do they route? The ideal wireless communication is only a small part required of this review. How well do they all perform with a specific adapter? Sure it would double the work but hey, I'm only going to be buying a router, I want to know how well it might do with what I've already got. What kind of performance numbers do you get on the wired ports? This would tell us what their wireless is adding to the equation. Do any of them actually detect and prioritize traffic for games, videos or any particular thing a consumer may care about? Some routers today claim they favor games but I'd like to know if it was the truth. Realisticly I don't care about a 10' hop for wireless since my router is through several walls at a greater distance so performing well at that one distance and dropping off on the other two doesn't deserve a "win" over a device that delivers more consistant results. I'd also like to see a review of network cards that claim to improve gaming performance and offload the CPU.

 

[CaptainStarbuck]

Time for another review? I've been using routers for years and it seems the big issue is firmware. It seems like the question we need to answer is which router sucks the least? Seriously, what devices really stand out in terms of customer satisfaction? That's the info we need!

 

[dEAne]

wow this is a good article. thank you tom.

 

[Guest]

What an embarrassing review. I am sure that a good fraction users do not use the WiFi features of a router like this for their throughput- or latency-intensive tasks. WHERE ARE THE WIRED LATENCY AND THROUGHPUT NUMBERS? WAN-to-LAN, LAN-to-WAN, # packets?