Me ranting about the marketing of some routers.

[Atlaslion]

Hey all,

 

I justed wanted to complain about an experience I had which was annoying and I hope people reading this won't make the same stupid mistake as me.

 

A few weeks ago I bought a router (Linksys AC1200). When looking at the box I saw that it could support speeds up to 1200Mbps, so silly me thinking "More than enough for my fiber connection". I also wanted to go the cheap or budget path since I didn't really need a high-end router. I mostly only wanted this router to watch movies in bed or for my phone. (I use cable which is directly connected to my main router for gaming). When setting up the router and connecting it to my main router I found out by my surprise my max down. speed was 90Mpbs on Wi-Fi.

First I thought my main router was the cause so I did some digging and everything worked fine. I could reach 400Mbps down. on Wi-Fi and 800Mbps down. on cable.

So I connected a cable on the Linksys AC1200 and again by my surprise also 90Mbps down. I thought by myself what's going on? I did some research (I know I should've done it earlier)

The ports on this thing don't even have a Gigabit port. So its limited to 100/10. So where the heck is this 1200Mbps coming from? Apparently it is the link speed between the router and your host as I've read. So not your actual internet speed. Yikes.

 

Anyway sorry for my complaining I feel scammed a little and wanted to share my story. My apologies if I said something wrong or false in my story. I feel like companies shouldn't get away with this.

 

Picture of the box in attachment.

[Skiiwee29]

The 1200Mbps is from the Wifi 5, 5ghz (802.11ac) as that can do a theoretical throughput of up to 1200mbps. The box itself should have identified that it was only a 10/100 router, not a gigabit. Looking at the packaging on Amazon, it labels the ports as "fast Ethernet" which is the official designation of 10/100 ports so its EXTREMELY misleading to those not in the know when it comes to networking and speeds and port naming schemes. So its not wrong per say, but a method used to conceal things from average consumers. 

 

Hard to see, but if you tilt your head and look at it, it says 4 Fast Ethernet Ports.

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Unfortunately it's a common thing among consumer networking gear. It's very common on powerline adaptors as well, that basically advertise themselves as gigabit but only use 10/100 ports. 

[Atlaslion]

Jup, I think I learned my lesson here. From now on I'm going to research before buying a product. It's just a shame that companies try to misguide the people who are not that "tech savvy" like me into buying a product that doesn't fulfill the actual needs of the consumer.

[Chris Pratt]

For future reference, all advertised speeds on WiFi routers are the theoretical maximums of the WiFi revision they implement, and no router gets anywhere near the theoretical maximum. That's like straight line of sight from router to device with no obstructions in lab conditions. If you have a gigabit downlink, you need WiFi 6 to take advantage of it wirelessly. 400-500Mbps is all you'll ever squeeze out of WiFi 5 (AC).

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Atlaslion said:

heck is this 1200Mbps coming from?

They advertise the WIFi speeds. And to top it off its 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz speeds added together. You have to really read the fine print, as you really dont connect to both bands at the same time, so you only get the speed for the rated band. 

 

3 hours ago, Atlaslion said:

I also wanted to go the cheap or budget path since I didn't really need a high-end router.

Thats the thing, the cheap routers tend to be cheap because they save a few cents on using slower Ethernet ports. 

 

 

To top all of this off again. Even if a router has Gigabit ports, it doesnt mean it supports Gigabit internet. How fast of internet a router supports is determined by the hardware inside the router. Many "Gigabit" routers generally cant do Gigabit NAT and so your going to not be able to get full internet speeds if you get a Gigabit plan. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

you need WiFi 6 to take advantage of it wirelessly. 400-500Mbps is all you'll ever squeeze out of WiFi 5 (AC).

Not exactly true, I've hit 850Mbit on WiFi 5, WiFi 6 just increases that to the full 940Mbit (though unlikely in the budget range).  Both regularly dropped far below that, I can't "consistently" hit above 400-500Mbit even on WiFi 6.  That's just the nature of wireless and how conditions on the airwaves can change.

 

7 hours ago, Atlaslion said:

Jup, I think I learned my lesson here. From now on I'm going to research before buying a product. It's just a shame that companies try to misguide the people who are not that "tech savvy" like me into buying a product that doesn't fulfill the actual needs of the consumer.

Actually your first mistake was buying a router if it was merely to extend the WiFi into your bedroom.

I mean it can work, but ideally you want to be using an Access Point or a router that supports Access Point mode, less likely to be found on the budget range.  Although your complaints are still valid, routers are poorly advertised.

Were you unable to get any WiFi reception from your main router in the bedroom though?  Even 2.4Ghz should be more than enough for watching videos (you only need around 25Mbit for 4K) and using your phone in general.  Its downloading large files like games where its mostly beneficial to have faster WiFi.

[Atlaslion]

On 12/2/2021 at 6:01 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

Were you unable to get any WiFi reception from your main router in the bedroom though?  Even 2.4Ghz should be more than enough for watching videos (you only need around 25Mbit for 4K) and using your phone in general.  Its downloading large files like games where its mostly beneficial to have faster WiFi.

Sorry for the late response. Busy weekend :D.
I live in 3 stories house. My main router is on the first floor. I got a Wi-Fi booster from my ISP and I put it on the second floor. Everything works fine on the first and second floor, but on the 3rd floor (my room) I had no Wi-Fi reception at all so I couldn't add a 2nd Wi-Fi booster. Luckily I have an ethernet cable running from the first floor to my room. So I thought I will just buy a cheap router and connect the main router to the cheap one (I use a small TP-link switch). I just disabled DHCP on the second router so it won't cause a conflict with the main one. I also just gave the second router a static IP so I can get in the config page.

I mostly only use the second router for watching Movies or scrolling the internet.