Potential Router Upgrade

[rojobahr]

My family lives in the US and we have AT&T as our ISP. We pay for their highest internet package. With their service comes fiber cables going to their standard UVerse router. This router spits out 2 signals, a 5Ghz and a 2.4Ghz wireless signal. The 5G is fast, but unstable; good for streaming/browsing but useless for online gaming (signal dies for about 10 seconds every so often), what little of it I do. The 2.4G is slower, but more consistent; just enough where I can play some occasional Waframe and watch some Youtube at the same time. My personal PC isn't wired to the router, my parent's iMac is, so I have to use wireless connection that goes to my bedroom and through a wall. I don't know the exact speeds we get because I don't really trust speed-tester websites. I've heard that ISPs will raise speeds past the normally throttled norm to give an illusion of advertised speeds when using them.

 

While what we have now works just fine (barring an infrequent event), I was wondering if there are any router upgrades that can be made to milk as much internet "performance" as we can out of what we pay for.

 

Thank you.

[TheBean]

well the best thing you can do is get as many devices off the wifi as possible, connect everything with ethernet where possible. 

 next, if you know how to, go through your router settings and change things as nessesary to make the wifi better. only do this if you actually know what you are doing since this can fuck up your network. 

 

if you are willing to spend money on a router, then def do that. the all-in-one devices that ISPs give are terrible quality. using your own router will make everything nicer and will also give you more range.

 

to test speeds, use dslreports. that one does some really good tests including checking bufferbloat. you can use fast.com to check if they throttle netflix since fast.com is hosted by netflix on their own servers. 

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, rojobahr said:

We pay for their highest internet package.

The highest they offer is Gigabit Fiber. Your not going to see Gigabit speeds on WiFi, WiFi never lives up to its potential due to interference in the real world.

 

A few issues you're going to have. 1) AT&T does not allow you to replace their gateway fully. You will need to put the box in pass thru mode to ensure you dont have double NAT. 2) You need to find a router that can actually handle Gigabit speeds if thats the speed tier you have. A router having Gigabit ports does not tell you if it can actually handle Gigabit speeds. You specifically need to know the LAN to WAN and the WAN to LAN throughput. Smallnetbuilder.com should have some stats on some routers. 3) As I said in the start WiFi will likely never hit Gigabit speeds, not over distance with interference. WiFi 6 would be your best bet however for getting the fastest speeds. 

[ToboRobot]

7 hours ago, rojobahr said:

.My personal PC isn't wired to the router

Run a cable!

[rojobahr]

On 10/11/2021 at 6:45 AM, ToboRobot said:

Run a cable!

I thought about doing this, but I also know that a long enough cable will result in higher latency and some slower speeds. Will a ~50-70ft cable still have better latencies and speeds than WiFi? 

 

On 10/11/2021 at 6:39 AM, Donut417 said:

WiFi 6 would be your best bet however for getting the fastest speeds. 

I took a look at my PC's wireless card, and it only supports up to WiFi 5. Any good WiFi 6 cards you recommend?

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, rojobahr said:

Any good WiFi 6 cards you recommend?

Anything Intel based. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

26 minutes ago, rojobahr said:

I thought about doing this, but I also know that a long enough cable will result in higher latency and some slower speeds. Will a ~50-70ft cable still have better latencies and speeds than WiFi? 

 

I took a look at my PC's wireless card, and it only supports up to WiFi 5. Any good WiFi 6 cards you recommend?

Ethernet cable length has barely measurable difference on speed or latency (an order of magnitude less increase in latency than what WiFi has right next to the router) and will ALWAYS be better than WiFi.

[Donut417]

29 minutes ago, rojobahr said:

I thought about doing this, but I also know that a long enough cable will result in higher latency and some slower speeds. Will a ~50-70ft cable still have better latencies and speeds than WiFi? 

 To add in to what @Alex Atkin UKstated. Ethernet is good up to 100m. Cat 5e can do 2.5 Gbps up to that 100m. Ethernet would have the lowest latency compared to WiFi. 

 

100m = 328 ft  btw. 

[ToboRobot]

40 minutes ago, rojobahr said:

I thought about doing this, but I also know that a long enough cable will result in higher latency and some slower speeds. Will a ~50-70ft cable still have better latencies and speeds than WiFi? 

Even Cat 5e supports over 100ft cables.  Wifi latency is higher than cables because you lose packets!  

Your wifi sucks, and the solution is a cable.  

[rojobahr]

The parents won't let me run a cable through the house, so WiFi it is.

On 10/17/2021 at 4:14 PM, Donut417 said:

Anything Intel based. 

Do you mean cards that utilize Intel's technology, because PCPartPick doesn't list Intel as directly selling any WiFi 6 cards? Attached screenshot shows the WiFi 6 cards that PCPartPicker lists, the ASUS AX58BT looks good.

 

On 10/11/2021 at 6:39 AM, Donut417 said:

A few issues you're going to have. 1) AT&T does not allow you to replace their gateway fully. You will need to put the box in pass thru mode to ensure you dont have double NAT. 2) You need to find a router that can actually handle Gigabit speeds if thats the speed tier you have. A router having Gigabit ports does not tell you if it can actually handle Gigabit speeds. You specifically need to know the LAN to WAN and the WAN to LAN throughput. Smallnetbuilder.com should have some stats on some routers.

Looking at smallnetbuilder's WiFi Router Ranker and, from looks and stats, I'm liking the ASUS AX5700 and the AX6000. You know if those ones are considered good? Smallnetbuilder doesn't seem to list the the WAN/LAN and LAN/WAN speeds.

One question I do have about a passthrough mode is whether the ethernet ports on the UVerse router and the wireless channels on a new router can be utilized without a speed impact, because those two routers don't look like they have dedicated ethernet ports, unless I'm an idiot and WAN ports connect the router to the modem (or UVerse router in my passthrough case, I think) and LAN ports connect the router to devices. 

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, rojobahr said:

Do you mean cards that utilize Intel's technology, because

Specifically Intel's chip set. Intel only sells laptop cards directly. But Intel is considered to have some of the best chipsets in this space. 

 

7 hours ago, rojobahr said:

passthrough mode is whether the ethernet ports on the UVerse router and the wireless channels on a new router can be utilized without a speed impact, because those two routers don't look like they have dedicated ethernet ports, unless I'm an idiot and WAN ports connect the router to the modem (or UVerse router in my passthrough case, I think) and LAN ports connect the router to devices. 

Essentially pass thru mode passes all traffic to the next device in the chain. You would connect an Ethernet cable from the Uverse box to the WAN port of the router. Then just use the router for every thing. Many people use this method and have never bitched about speed issues. 

 

7 hours ago, rojobahr said:

ooking at smallnetbuilder's WiFi Router Ranker and, from looks and stats, I'm liking the ASUS AX5700 and the AX6000. You know if those ones are considered good?

I dont have experience directly with ASUS routers, I have seen many positive things about them. I think the AI mesh feature most support is cool. I personally use the Synology RT2600AC. I haven't upgraded to WIFi 6 yet, because Im waiting to see if WiFi 6E is going to be worth it. Plus my router does just fine with the speeds Comcast supplies on top of the fact my router also keeps track of data usage per device and thats good because Comcast has data caps. 

[rojobahr]

On 10/21/2021 at 6:33 AM, Donut417 said:

Specifically Intel's chip set. Intel only sells laptop cards directly. But Intel is considered to have some of the best chipsets in this space. 

 

Essentially pass thru mode passes all traffic to the next device in the chain. You would connect an Ethernet cable from the Uverse box to the WAN port of the router. Then just use the router for every thing. Many people use this method and have never bitched about speed issues. 

 

I dont have experience directly with ASUS routers, I have seen many positive things about them. I think the AI mesh feature most support is cool. I personally use the Synology RT2600AC. I haven't upgraded to WIFi 6 yet, because Im waiting to see if WiFi 6E is going to be worth it. Plus my router does just fine with the speeds Comcast supplies on top of the fact my router also keeps track of data usage per device and thats good because Comcast has data caps. 

I've done a little bit of research, and I believe that I have found out how to enable the Uverse's passthrough mode. It doesn't have a clearly marked and dedicated passthrough-to-another-router button, just a sub-sub-menu where you select a device and select a box that says "All traffic goes to this selected device". Took me a while to find. 

 

I haven't decided yet if I am actually going to get my family a new router for Christmas. The ones I'm eyeing are in the $250-300 range which, even when combined with a new Wi-Fi card, are definitely affordable. The only reason why I haven't already done so is because, as I said in my OP, the current one works ok (albeit with a very annoyances here and there). I'll ask my family members what they think. Even if I do wait, I'll have a nice little pseudo-guide here that I can follow.

 

So I'll just mark your latest reply as the solution, just so that it doesn't look like this is unresolved.

 

Thank you.

[rojobahr]

Oh, and one more thing! We got these AT&T Wi-Fi extenders a while back. I'm not sure if they actually do anything since a Wi-Fi speed test with them plugged in and unplugged didn't really yield any difference. (~15-25 mbps on 2.4G and ~100 mbps on 5.0G signal both times) Should I even bother with them in the event I get a new router (or at all)?

[Donut417]

18 minutes ago, rojobahr said:

Should I even bother with them in the event I get a new router (or at all)?

Depends if they are "Extenders" or a type of Mesh system. Mesh works a bit differently than WiFi extenders. Honestly if you buy a new router, most likely those AT&T boxes WONT work with the new router. Comcast does a similar thing, they have ways to extend WIFI but your required to use their gateway. My family owns our own modem and thus wouldn't be able to utilize them. Lucky for me my router gives good coverage through out.