New wireless. N, AC, or none?

The wireless situation in the house at the moment is a bit of a hodgepodge. We have cable internet with a dedicated modem. Connected to that we have a D-Link DIR-615, which our ISP gave us for free. Throughput is decent, when it works. The SSID likes to disappear randomly sometimes (annoying when you come home and are trying to get on wireless) and downloading a torrent of any kind will cause it to lock up unless the software is set to an obscenely low number of concurrent connections. I currently have it set to a "Global Max" of 50 connections and it still locks up the router sometimes.

Piggybacked off that modem is a Netgear WPN824v2 "RangeMax". It's my old apartment router. Rock solid, stable, better range than the D-Link, but limited by the fact that it's 802.11G even if it does support MIMO.

I'd like to cut down to one reliable modem without spending a ton of coin. The AC routers are sexy, but it seems that the good ones are quite expensive, and I'm not sure how the more modestly priced units perform, so it's tempting to get a better N router, but then I wonder why am I spending money just to sidegrade? The network needs to support two laptops, two phones, and one tablet. Large transfers do happen over the wireless network (transfers from TiVo to PC), so higher speeds would be nice.

Possible solutions as I see it:

Check for DD-WRT compatibility on the DIR-615. It's available for some hardware revisions but not others. Would this potentially solve the randomly missing SSID broadcast and torrent lockup issues?

Buy a good new N modem. Which one? Asus RT-N66U perhaps?

Buy a new AC modem. Again, which one? The Asus RT-AC66U reviews well. Watch for Thanksgiving deals maybe? Problem here is it would require a new adapter for the PC to enjoy the higher speeds, which is an added expense. The Monoprice AC router and adapter deal is tempting. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052102&p_id=11611&seq=1&format=2 It's not sexy, but the price is right if the performance is there.

Any thoughts from those with more experience with modern wireless gear?

Build your own router with old PC parts and use the router you have as an AP only. You can even use both of your existing routers set to different channels, then divide up the load.

I do not understand why you are running more than one wireless router off the dedicated modem. Are you trying to fix dead spots in areas of the house that aren't being reached by the other piggy-backed router . . . which I assume is located near the dedicated modem? Please give us more details as to what the issues are and why you are doing it this way? Having more than one wireless router broadcasting WIFI signals in close proximity can itself be problematic as they can interfere with one another. If you have more than one router running off the same modem make sure you set the channels manually and assign them different channels and make sure they have different IP addresses or they will fight and be unstable.

The other thing I would say in my experience is that with time inexpensive modems tend to degrade such that they become unstable and begin frequently dropping signals - often within a year after being deployed.

Also, dual band modems are a waste of money if you are counting on the 5 ghz band signal to take care of your problems. The 5 ghz band signal is truly wonderful if your phone/computer/tablet is in the same room as the router. Very fast. But it penetrates walls and floors very poorly and in that scenario N is much better.

Routers vary tremendously and in their transmitting power. I'm hearing that some of the high end Asus routers have big reach and this may be a better solution if you're willing to shell out a couple hundred bucks or so.

trents said:

I do not understand why you are running more than one wireless router off the dedicated modem.

Click to expand...

I tried to be fairly clear about this in the initial post without being too verbose. Is there some part that's unclear or you need more info on?

The SSID likes to disappear randomly sometimes (annoying when you come home and are trying to get on wireless) and downloading a torrent of any kind will cause it to lock up unless the software is set to an obscenely low number of concurrent connections. I currently have it set to a "Global Max" of 50 connections and it still locks up the router sometimes.

Piggybacked off that modem is a Netgear WPN824v2 "RangeMax". It's my old apartment router. Rock solid, stable, better range than the D-Link, but limited by the fact that it's 802.11G even if it does support MIMO.

Click to expand...

The SSID broadcast likes to disappear on the D-Link. It locks up when downloading torrents. The signal/connection occasionally disappears entirely, forcing devices to re-scan and reconnect (if the broadcast is working, otherwise the connection just goes away). That is why the older, slower wireless is there. It's rock solid, but slower. When the faster connection disappears, devices fall back to the slower one.

The neighborhood doesn't have much "wireless density". The said, the D-Link is on channel 1, the Netgear is on channel 6, and the only neighbor within range is using channel 11. Not much in the way of interference issues. They're about 6 feet apart and turning off the one doesn't make the other perform any better/differently.

I know the 5 GHz band has limited range, but I think it'll be enough in this house. Range inside the house isn't usually an issue. Our accidental aluminum siding Faraday cage is a double edged sword. It keeps interference out from outside sources, but is also effectively block cells signals from getting out or using wifi in the yard.

Anyway ... is there any way to know what the broadcast power of a particular wifi device might be? Is it listed in the specs anywhere? Aside from simply counting on reviews, what specs or features should I be looking for?

I have an N66U from Asus and it does a great job for what we need it to do. I would like an AC router, but only a couple of our handful of devices support AC so I'm not going to spend the money on it until all of ours do.

Why have you not put DD-WRT on it?

I have the DIR-601 running the latest BETA build (DON'T flash this one) and it runs everything great.
I did however upgrade the antenna with a 5Dbi antenna that I soldered on.

Get build 21061, it's very stable. Just find your revision number for your router - C1, D1 etc they are all supported anyway.


I say don't flash the latest BETA build (24461) because I'm permanently stuck with it. I can't flash back to older firmware or stock firmware. Thankfully it's a good build as well. (You have to dig hard to find the BETA anyway)

Here's the flashing guide for the DIR-615 revision C. But it should be very similar if you have any other revision.



Also ensure you aren't on the same channel as your neighbors

Silver - do you think the DD-WRT will help with the issues I'm seeing? I've considered it, but I've never flashed custom firmware to a router before. This would be decidedly virgin territory for me. I have the DIR-615 E3, which is fully supported. I suppose it can't be much scarier than anything else I've flashed custom stuff to. I should just do it and see what happens before I go spending money.

Wait, did I just talk myself out of a new router? Damn, I think I might have.

JeremyCT said:

Silver - do you think the DD-WRT will help with the issues I'm seeing? I've considered it, but I've never flashed custom firmware to a router before. This would be decidedly virgin territory for me. I have the DIR-615 E3, which is fully supported. I suppose it can't be much scarier than anything else I've flashed custom stuff to. I should just do it and see what happens before I go spending money.

Wait, did I just talk myself out of a new router? Damn, I think I might have.

Click to expand...

Doesn't matter if you go buy a shiny new Wireless AC router anyway - you need devices that support wireless AC. Your old stuff will still use N or G if that's what they support.

And yeah, with DD-wrt you can tweak a lot of settings for Wifi, like the antenna power channels, weather to combine channels, CTS/RTS etc. even set up multiple access points on the same router

See?




Look at it like this: if you're just gonna replace the router anyway, it won't matter if it gets bricked when you flash it
You got nothing to lose

The main issue is that it's got so many options that I'm afraid I'll either set it up wrong security-wise or break the router entirely. The second isn't much of an issue, as you pointed out. Based on reading, the first shouldn't be too much of an issue if I leave the default settings mostly alone. I'll give it a shot tomorrow and see what happens.

JeremyCT said:

The main issue is that it's got so many options that I'm afraid I'll either set it up wrong security-wise or break the router entirely. The second isn't much of an issue, as you pointed out. Based on reading, the first shouldn't be too much of an issue if I leave the default settings mostly alone. I'll give it a shot tomorrow and see what happens.

Click to expand...

Just ask questions here
I can give a hand if you needs some help or don't understand what something does.

It's what we do here

So I had a night of mild insomnia and I got the DD-WRT install done while the rest of the family was asleep. It was painless aside from needing to reset the cable modem for the router to acquire an ISP connection. The settings available were somewhat daunting, but I stuck to the "if I don't know what it is, leave it alone" principle.

So far (maybe a few hours into things) it seems good. I threw a whole load of downloads and torrents at it and it hasn't hiccuped or thrown a hissy at all. I'll try to remember to update this in a week or two with any other observations. DD-WRT definitely seems to be a winner at this point though, far better than the stock firmware in this particular case. Thanks for the nudge I needed to actually try it out.

JeremyCT said:

So I had a night of mild insomnia and I got the DD-WRT install done while the rest of the family was asleep. It was painless aside from needing to reset the cable modem for the router to acquire an ISP connection. The settings available were somewhat daunting, but I stuck to the "if I don't know what it is, leave it alone" principle.

So far (maybe a few hours into things) it seems good. I threw a whole load of downloads and torrents at it and it hasn't hiccuped or thrown a hissy at all. I'll try to remember to update this in a week or two with any other observations. DD-WRT definitely seems to be a winner at this point though, far better than the stock firmware in this particular case. Thanks for the nudge I needed to actually try it out.

Click to expand...

It's no lie: DD-WRT turns your $20 router into a $100 router

DD-WRT really helps the cheaper DLinks I've found.
Glad it works!

Later on you can start tweaking some settings

If you change the broken DIR-615 to a functional N router, that's not a sidegrade, that's an upgrade . That said, I would try DD-WRT first, if supported.