Wireless N or new aerial

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randomwalsh

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Hi

Basically trying to figure out which way to go in extending my wireless network.

Currently have a billion 400g with the standard antenna on it. But transfer speeds are horrible and range is worse. Would it improved with a more powerful antenna or should I just get a wireless N router?

Do the N router have a greater range? I know they have higher transfer speeds...


If you recommend N router. Which N router is a good make and that it can take 4 ethernet slots as well?
 
randomwalsh said:
Hi

Basically trying to figure out which way to go in extending my wireless network.

Currently have a billion 400g with the standard antenna on it. But transfer speeds are horrible and range is worse. Would it improved with a more powerful antenna or should I just get a wireless N router?

Do the N router have a greater range? I know they have higher transfer speeds...


If you recommend N router. Which N router is a good make and that it can take 4 ethernet slots as well?
Click to expand...

Take a look at the Netgear wireless N routers. I have one and the speeds are good. Just don't make the same mistake by buying a Wireless Extender too (sure, range is awesome, but speeds blow ;) )
 
I would go with the N router. However remember that if you have a G adapter in your PC then 54mbits is going to be the max that you will transfer at irrespective of the router. So yo may need to look at your wireless adapters to make sure they are N as well.

Regards

Tim
 
Definitely N, the kit you get uses MIMO, which is specifically designed to increase range:
MIMO technology has attracted attention in wireless communications, because it offers significant increases in data throughput and link range without additional bandwidth or increased transmit power. It achieves this goal by spreading the same total transmit power over the antennas to achieve an array gain that improves the spectral efficiency (more bits per second per hertz of bandwidth) or to achieve a diversity gain that improves the link reliability (reduced fading). Because of these properties, MIMO is an important part of modern wireless communication standards such as IEEE 802.11n (Wi-Fi), 4G, 3GPP Long Term Evolution, WiMAX and HSPA+.
Click to expand...
If you want (relatively) cheap, cheerful and well equipped, look at the WR1043ND: you get 4x GbE ports.
 
ok so I brought a 9db antenna from PC Zone and that did nothing. Going to return that. It didnt increase the range at all.

Really want a N router now. I wish I could afford the Asus RT-N66U

but it looks like these are my options so far:

TP-Link WR1043ND (thanks bdt for that suggestion)
D-Link DIR-615
D-Link DIR-655

Also in my search I came across alot of reviews that would state that dd-wrt would greatly increase the function of the particular router.

Anybody can comment on that?
 
Last edited:
randomwalsh said:
Also in my search I came across alot of reviews that would state that dd-wrt would greatly increase the function of the particular router.

Anybody can comment on that?
Click to expand...
dd-wrt is infamous for unlocking all sorts of abilities a device may be able to do but, because it is not in their financial interest to do so, OEMs don't program in. Note that dd-wrt gets a buttload of limelight and, frankly, is a LOT easier to get to know from the get-go but OpenWrt is just straight up better engineered. Frankly, were it my money, I would only ever buy something OpenWrt compatible (dd-wrt too if at all possible (and you usually get both)).
 
Was at Sanlam centre now in Pinetown. Walked into a Telkom direct shop and basically you can get a free router from them every two years. All you have to do is sign a two contract stating that you will be staying with them for two years.

Does eveyone know this?

The two routers they have available for this option is the:
Netgear DGN2200
D-Link DSL-2750U
 
Changing antennas as you found out wouldn't actually increase range or speeds since the antennas still rely on power from the connection to the router. That's one of the biggest flaws of antennas that rely on power from their connection. As far as choosing a router goes both of them are great, but remember each unit will have different web UI's and different support.

Cheers
 
randomwalsh said:
Hi

Basically trying to figure out which way to go in extending my wireless network.

Currently have a billion 400g with the standard antenna on it. But transfer speeds are horrible and range is worse. Would it improved with a more powerful antenna or should I just get a wireless N router?

Do the N router have a greater range? I know they have higher transfer speeds...


If you recommend N router. Which N router is a good make and that it can take 4 ethernet slots as well?
Click to expand...

I went from a billion 400g to a D-link 2750U, I get 4 mb/s downloads from anywhere in the house... I used to have to connect my PC via network cable to the router to get any kind of speed/ latency, now I connect wirelessly and get a 25 ping to some servers.
 
ok will I went a got a TP-Link WDR4300 for a excellent price.

Now I am having problems with setting it up.

My setup up is a follows.


Internet ----> Billion 400g ------ETHERNET CABLE CONNECTS to -------> Billion 400g ------ ETHERNET CABLE CONNECTS to -----> WDR4300

Now the problem is anything connected to the wdr4300 has internet connection but it gets assigned a ip of 192.168.0.xxx where as my first billion 400g assigns ips of 10.0.0.xxx and the second billion 400g has dhcp turned off.

I tried turning off the dhcp in the wdr4300 but then I couldn't get into the router again and had to do a hard reset.

Any ideas?
 
What's your reason for having that many routers?

If you want to use them as switches, just disable their WiFi AP and DHCP servers.
The Billion 400g is an ADSL modem and not a broadband router, so I'd suggest that you switch off at least on of them's DHCP server!

I'd rather set it up as follow:
ADSL <-> Billion 400g (with DHCP server on: 192.168.0.x) <--LAN cable to WAN port of -> WDR4300 (with WiFi AP & DHCP server on: 192.168.1.x) <-LAN cable from LAN port to LAN port -> Billion 400g (with DHCP server off)

If the 2nd Billion 400g cannot obtain an IP address automatically from the TP-Link, then set its IP address manually to 192.168.1.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway & primary DNS 192.168.1.1
 
The first billion 400g is in the main house with DHCP Server on.

Before I had the WDR4300 I used another billion 400g for the cottage which was connected to the first billion via a long LAN cable.

Now that I have the WDR 4300 for the cottage as well as the wanted to get wireless N and gigabit lan. I have kept the billion 400g(cottage) online so that the g only capable devices can connect to it so that I can get wireless N from the WDR 4300 for my other wireless N devices. But that doesn't seem to be happening as my laptop only connects @ 54mbps and my Note only connects @ 63mbps.

Do I still need the second billion g?

Also is there a difference between setting the IP range to 192.168.0.x instead of 10.0.0.x which the billion 400g currently does...
 
There will be no difference between 10.0.0.0/24 and 192.18.0.0/24

Just keep all your devices on the same subnet to prevent complication.

Do as Pada says with the setup. Static IPs on all the routers, dhcp only on the router which does the ADSL, ADSL router is tee default gateway for every other router.

While you can have 2 wifi routers in the same area, the devices are just going to connect to the first one they pick up, unless you give some devices login details of the one only and others devices login details of the other. Make sure to keep the channels they are using far apart. As the number of connected device grows the performance benefit of having 2 wifi routers will increase
 
ok great I have set it up with all the same subnet.

Now the next thing is the speed of the wireless N.... my Dell Latitude e6410 only connects @ 144mbps when I am practically sitting on the router. My Samsung Galaxy Note only connects @ 64mbps also right next to the router. This is at the 2.4gHz.

So how does one get the 300mbps u would expect from the top of the range tp-link router?
 
randomwalsh said:
ok great I have set it up with all the same subnet.

Now the next thing is the speed of the wireless N.... my Dell Latitude e6410 only connects @ 144mbps when I am practically sitting on the router. My Samsung Galaxy Note only connects @ 64mbps also right next to the router. This is at the 2.4gHz.

So how does one get the 300mbps u would expect from the top of the range tp-link router?
Click to expand...

Both these devices have integrated antenna's so the limiting factor is on the client device, if you're connecting the the router with a client device that has external antenna's you'll see greatly improved results.

As with any wireless device, you also need to take into account external factors such as signal interference from other 2.4Ghz systems, building structure (this may not be a factor in this case, just pointing it out) etc...

Here's an extract from a website on the topic....

"Unfortunately, simply swapping out your current router for a high(er) power usually doesn't help increase your wireless coverage. The 802.11 standards that all Wi-Fi networks are built on use a "positive acknowledgement" protocol. That means each data packet (or frame) that is sent must be acknowledged by the receiver via a reply back to the sender. If no acknowledgement is received, the sender will try again and again until a timeout is reached and the sender gives up and drops the connection.

So when you increase the power on a wireless router or access point (AP), all this does is make it "shout louder". Sure, a wireless notebook in a dead zone may now be able to "hear" the router, where it couldn't before. But unless the client can shout just as loudly back, the client won't be able to communicate with the AP and the connection will be dropped or won't be made at all.."
 
Ok well I just made my laptop join the 5Ghz instead and connecting at 300mbps now. Stoked
 
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