What's the best WiFi-N router to get today?

Discussion in 'Internet & Networking' started by Adrian Wong, Dec 29, 2010.

  1. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    Hey I am not a network expert. How do you do the Vlan tagging etc?

    i did not see any special setup in the router page ..
     
  2. karhoe

    karhoe Newbie

    I think Chai mentioned somewhere before only certain routers support it
     
  3. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

  4. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Sorry, but why do you need VLAN tagging? :think:

    Doesn't the Unifi modem support it already?
     
  5. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Only if you can stand how bad the router is, that is.
     
  6. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    BTW, I'm not sure if I got anything wrong but I tried transferring files from the laptop to the new WD TV Live Hub using 40 MHz WiFi-N and Gigabit LAN and obtained truly pathetic results :

    I wonder... is this kind of bandwidth expected of all routers, or did I make any mistake in the setup?
     
  7. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    damn . . reading the unifi stuff is scary, there was one time the management tab left enable on the router. The next thing I know my router admin password got changed! ..

    Was damn pissed. I unplug the router, did a full reset with pin, use the default password and reaccess the router. Damn smart unifi ppl ...seesh ..

    Adrian: Have you tried wireless play a full HD movie, shud be ok ba.. mine was well. BTW, is your WD TV Hub review unit?!
     
  8. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    I don't think a device like WD TV Live Hub is designed to run at maximum throughput.
     
  9. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    I've never gotten anything remotely close to 300Mbps. That's why I never recommend you to get one. It's nice to "have" it, but in reality, it's not that much better than a good G router.
     
  10. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Will be trying that soon. Been testing the other aspects of the Live Hub. Was also retesting the WD TV Live with the new firmware.

    Speaking of which - I noticed that the new WD TV Live firmware greatly increased its boot up time. A ton of new features though. However, AccuWeather in the WD TV Live doesn't seem to have Kuala Lumpur in the list. AccuWeather in the Live Hub didn't have this problem though... :think:

    PS. Yes, it's a review unit. Received it just before Christmas! :D
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2011
  11. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Well, it should have much better throughput because LAN or WiFi is supposed to be the main avenues to deliver content to the WD TV Live Hub's internal hard disk drive.

    Even using Gigabit LAN, it would take about 26 hours to fill up the 1 TB hard disk drive. If you are stuck using WiFi, then you would need well over 2 days - about 55 hours. :nuts:

    On a more serious note - it may not be possible to stream a high-bitrate, full HD movie using 20 MHz WiFi-N. Even 40 MHz WiFi-N may barely just handle it. Will need to check and confirm.
     
  12. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Well, I'm on the 2.4 GHz band plus I'm sharing it with WiFi-B and WiFi-G devices, so I guess it's expected that my WiFi-N bandwidth would be lower than what it would be if I only had a dedicated -N network. But it's still ridiculously low. At this speed, I'm not 100% sure I can stream the high-bitrate movies directly to the WD TV Live Hub via WiFi.

    Do note that this is absolutely the best performance I can get. My laptop is located just 1.5 meters away from the router in direct line-of-sight. Just imagine how much lower the bandwidth would be if the laptop were to be located, say, in a room with a wall or two between it and the router.
     
  13. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Exactly like what I told you.

    But my notebook N client copied a 700MB movie file in about 3 mins.

    There's no significant difference with 20MHz or 40MHZ with my own testing.
     
  14. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    That's why I think there's something wrong somewhere. Could be something in my network setup. :think:
     
  15. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Try to test by copying from a PC to PC. You don't want bottleneck caused by these devices.
     
  16. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Yeah, will do that. Don't have another WiFi-N device (other than the iPad) so will have to try it on a WiFi-G device.
     
  17. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Test by copying from N device to LAN.
     
  18. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Just tried WiFi-N to WiFi-G and vice versa but it failed. The connection would drop. Maybe it's because I tried to copy over a 36 GB movie... :shifty: :shifty:

    I also tested streaming the same file from my computer using 40 MHz WiFi-N to the WD TV Live Hub. Unfortunately, the movie jerked really bad. Then again, the Live Hub was compiling the media database, so I will give it a try again later.

    I will also replace the Cat 5e LAN cable from the router to the WD TV Live Hub with a newer Cat 5e cable and see if that helps.
     
  19. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    One funny thing about the Linksys WRT-320N router is that the Reboot button is hidden under Administration -> Diagnostics.

    Funny why they classify Reboot as a Diagnostic tool.. :roll:
     
  20. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Did you flash to the latest firmware? I know they changed the location of the reboot button for certain firmwares like my E3000.
     

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