Looking for a wifi access point... bla bla bla life story and is anyone else annoyed at how you end up with, mostly, a device that does up to 300mbps yet has a wired connection to it of only 100mbps? I only want to update the speed of it for internal transfers. GF uses wifi to connect to nas. Anyway, I'll likely be buying this if no one has any suggestions.
A timely post, old bean! I'm also looking to upgrade my speed, coverage and security from the Orange/EE BrightBox I was given. Thought about going to 802.11ac but then decided against it due to cost of upgrading, the fact that many of my devices like phones, Xboxes etc. don't support it and the key point that my internet speed is 4Mbps. The BrightBox has recently been proven to be completely insecure though and I'm not sure if any update has been rolled out yet. I eventually settled on moving my router upstairs but haven't yet tested to see whether the bridge in the lounge at the opposite end of the house can pick it up at decent speed though. I checked out your link and for just under £40 it looks good - can I ask, did you do much research and given my internet speed and the fact I don't do heaps of internal transfers (yet?), is it worth the £40 for this over a £20-30 wireless repeater and/or Giga switch box (with or without Homeplug adapters)? Also, what's your external WAN speed?
Maybe, I'm not sure if they'll just hand one out. Suppose it is worth a shot. If you don't ask... The research I did involved this: I kept looking at wifi access points at that price point - around £40. Discovered they were, pretty much, all held back by the FastEthernet port. (Remember I only care about internal network performance) So I started a slightly different search method of finding one of the cheapest wifi routers that had gigabit switch inbuilt (which is common) and wireless N. I'm running on the assumption I can just use it as an access point as nearly all wifi routers allow you to do such a thing. Actual WAN speeds I get won't touch the sides of 100mbps let alone 300mbps at ~38mbps up and ~9mbps down. Whether it is worth it or not? Or any good? I'm not bothered. £40 and a warranty of a year at least delivers peace in my mind. Larger files should load up to 3x quicker on her laptop (she has applicable wireless N standard as does my laptop.) To be fair to DABs I think this is a particularly good deal. So make sure, if you want one and don't mind dropping £40, to buy one. I guess my real point was what is the point of 300mbps when you are held back by 100mbps? You might say because it will help speed up other users with internet connectivity? Nope... it's faster than my internet connection. So even if I had 80mbps down, I couldn't really get any benefit, unless I was doing internal transfers. But we have a recursive loop here where my real point was, what is the point of 300mbps when you are held back by 100mbps? You might say because it will help speed up other users with internet connectivity? Nope... it's faster than my internet connection. So even if I had 80mbps down, I couldn't really get any benefit, unless I was doing internal transfers. But we have a recursive loop here where my real point was, what is the point of 300mbps when you are held back by 100mbps? You might say because it will help speed up other users with internet connectivity? Nope... it's faster than my internet connection. So even if I had 80mbps down, I couldn't really get any benefit, unless I was... you get my point. Not worth it unless for internal transfers.
Ah, I see. Might hang on at this stage then and fiddle with placement first. Seems like everything will just bottleneck at my WAN anyway (although I did read one review of your suggested router that reckoned they got a little more speed out of their line). Found this as well, just in case you haven't ordered yet: http://www.onestoppcshop.co.uk/tp-l...cyQHFBokd8uvK69sue-g2Yz0uGJqGyb4EBbpQWZPD_BwE
Just a side note law99, the 150/300/450 Mbps values you see at the 802.11n (or older/newer gen) are physical layer speed values. Why am i saying this ? Because WiFi is a half-duplex medium, which is shared, resulting in drop of speed if you have more than 1 client communicating, drop of speed when you need to do uploads too (as you can either download or upload), drop of speed due distance, drop of speed because of the encryption,.... You should usually calculate with 40-50% of the "advertised" speed even in best case scenario. Example - i got a 450Mbps 802.11n in the router, 300Mbps in the desktop. Top speed when the desktop is ~2m from the router ? 300Mbps maximum from my WiFi adapter, dropped to ~120-150Mbps physical link speed, dropped to ~60Mbps real speed. Same computer, same router, but through an Ethernet cable :
further exacerbating the problem. But good point, I'd not realised it was half duplex... makes perfect sense though and would at least validate what the point was for having a wireless device on a fastethernet port. I'm guessing MIMO and other technologies could mitigate this somewhat. On my home network, the most devices to ever be connected will be ... cue trumpets ... 2.
Huh. Think I'm the opposite in that case - I appear to need a terabit wireless access point with a bloody 10 meg WAN!
I use a netgear wndap 350, a tad on the expensive side, but it is professional kit but doesn't have 802.11ac compatibility
It has very good coverage, it's on the ground floor of my 3 storey house, and the signal on the top floor is good
