High-end AC vs Standard Modem/Router/Wireless-Combo

[Daniel Williams]

Hello LinusTechTippers,

 

I have been following the show on YouTube for some time now, and have almost gotten through all videos, which are all awesome by the way.

- My boss came to me the other day, and asked if my job shouldn't pay for my broadband at home, which I ofcourse said yes to.

 

I don't know much about networking, so I hope you can help me with this basic question:

 

So my connection is now upgraded to 300/50 mbit, so now I want to upgrade me gear.

My Internet provider has given me a all-in-one modem/router/wireless called "Technicolor TZ7230" which takes in a TV cable, and outputs internet both Ethernet and Wifi.

 

When having 100 mbit, and speed testing the internet, right beside it, it drops to about 30 mbit.

 

So my question is actually - How much improvement will I get right beside it, if I buy any high-end product instead, and just use the modem functionality in the given box.

 

I was thinking Unifi myself, because Linus seems to like it, and it is the best selling on my local electronic store website.

 

Hope you will help,

/Daniel

[desertcomputer]

I would get old server rack/PC/ubiquiti lite and switch and ubiquiti access point(AC Lite/Pro). I would think lite should be enough for your usage as wifi in most case won't be your bottleneck. You're set, the setup might take a while but trust me it worth it. This is what I somewhat running right now, although power usage might be bit more because using old PC but it gives more option such as better control of QOS, proxy, caching, Intrusion detection, VPN and much more. 

[Lurick]

How close to the wireless box are you?

[Daniel Williams]

5 minutes ago, Lurick said:

How close to the wireless box are you?

I use cable on all my devices, Chromecast, Apple TV and Gaming PC - So what I need, is for Sonos and for my iPhone.

The Sonos is placed around the house, with large thick walls, I have the option to place as many wireless points as I want, it not a matter of cost, but more how much benefit I will actually get, from what I have today? right beside the wifi box (0.5 meters)

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Daniel Williams said:

I use cable on all my devices, Chromecast, Apple TV and Gaming PC - So what I need, is for Sonos and for my iPhone.

The Sonos is placed around the house, with large thick walls, I have the option to place as many wireless points as I want, it not a matter of cost, but more how much benefit I will actually get, from what I have today? right beside the wifi box (0.5 meters)

 

If your wireless coverage is pretty good now then you won't get much benefit aside better throughput possibly but if the modem only has 100Mb ports on it then you won't even get close to seeing the 350 download you're paying for now and it won't be worth it really to upgrade. Just be sure you aren't too close to the box because there is an area of weak to no signal which can be anywhere from a few inches to a few feet from the box.

[Jay_JWLH]

Even at cable speeds, keep in mind that what you download and upload on your cable broadband line may not always reach the maximum speed, especially if the traffic is going overseas and/or focusing on a single server. But hopefully with enough connections, users and/or devices, you can make as much of it as possible.

 

As for the WLAN, I have found that wireless routers (especially the higher end ones), won't give one wireless client the full bandwidth. Spread out over three devices and it just might however, due to things like smartphones still only taking up to a certain amount of frequencies. They may not even be optimized, or able to pick up signals as well as something obviously bigger than what can fit in your hand. Get a high end USB adapter on the other and you just might do much better. But why would a smartphone need to download such a huge amount at once anyway? Besides dealing in files.

 

I also consider how well the wireless router can handle heat. If you do something like use torrent downloading, it can easily fill up the NAT table and create a lot of processing for it. Or at least I've had that issue in the past. It may not be such a bad thing currently, but something to consider, especially if the router doesn't have enough CPU power.

 

You might consider getting two AP's, and have them roam from far enough ends of the house. That way at least if someone is downloading enough to use up the frequencies on one AP, the other AP will have its own. Just make sure they aren't the same channels for this.

 

As for actual speeds, the fastest AC speeds I have seen out there is AC3000, but there could be faster. That could give you 450 Mbit/s on 2.4GHz, and 1300 + 1300 Mbit/s on 5GHz. And that's just the theoretical maximum, but will be cut down noticeably with overhead and everything else (like distance and interference). And don't forget me mentioning how not all clients would connect to all those available frequencies, that come in 40MHz and 80MHz blocks accordingly.