Shopping for a new router

[JLB]

Hey guys. Looking for some input here. Have an older belkin router model number F7D2301. The thing sucks. It drops quite a bit. And the wireless range is pretty shitty. Looking for one with more range. Thinking of an AirPort Extreme, maybe a previous refurb off of amazon. I have a ton of apple devices in the house and an Apple TV, although not sure that it matters. I don't need anything crazy, and I don't need it too techy. In reality, I just want more signal. Faster speeds a plus. I know that range depends largely on house structure and such, but hoping to get more than. What I have. Would love to be able to use outside. Nice thing about the AirPort Extreme is the ability to add on an airport express pretty easily. What are your thoughts/recommendations? Thanks as always.


-Jared

 

[FullBody Smoker]

I have a Linksys/Cisco E4200 and I love it.

 

[FullBody Smoker]

I can stream Directv to my iPad in my shop that is a good 75-100' from the router.

 

[TravelingJ]

Chrisso has made sure that my house and camper are both running on Buffalo routers. They replaced my previously linksys crap, and are pretty awesome. We are all mac'ed out with the the iPhones, iPads, and apple tvs in both places. I won't buy anything but buffalo at this point.

 

[MoJo]

Never used an airport so others will have to chime in on those, but I have usually had good results with Linksys/Cisco and netgear. A couple specs to look at is the wireless standard - whether it's capable of ac or n, ac is newer and faster/better but not many (if any at all) devices are ac capable yet so unless your concerned with future proofing your router or plan on upgrading your devices this may not matter, another spec is if it's dual band, which means it can run on both 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies. This is useful if you have a lot of WiFi traffic in your area which can slow down your connection, which is most likely on the 2.4 band, you could use the 5ghz band to improve your connection if your devices support it. The down side to 5ghz is that it doesn't have as much range as 2.4. There are a good amount of other options that can help, such as router placement, extenders, messing with some advance settings, etc.

Edit: to support travelingj I have heard good things about buffalo but have never used then myself

 

[mthhurley]

I've got a similar problem in that my router is in my office which is the extreme corner of the house. Barely any signal upstairs in our bedroom on the opposite side of the house.
The most popular recommendation I've received in a few places is just to get another inexpensive router, hard wire it to the first and place it more center in the house, thereby expanding the coverage beyond the first antenna.
I'm lucky since I can run cable through the floor in my office, to the basement, across the dropped ceiling down there and back up to the main floor right where I will place the second router.

I haven't done this yet, but seems reasonable to me.

 

[JLB]

I'll look into the buffalo routers. And I kind of tried the extender thing and it didn't work so well. No one with the AirPort Extreme?


-Jared

 

[mthhurley]

There's a huge difference between an extender/repeater and hardwiring to a second router as an access point (as I learned in researching).
Repeaters have inherent problems that AP's do not. Repeaters/extenders basically halve your bandwidth whereas a second access point does not. The drawback is the need to hardware them together.

 

[Splatt]

I had a repeater and the low signal I was getting in my office just became a slower low signal. Chucked that and just moved my router up a few shelves in the garage and got an external antenna for my pc that I was able to place in a better spot

 

[mthhurley]

I had a repeater and the low signal I was getting in my office just became a slower low signal. Chucked that and just moved my router up a few shelves in the garage and got an external antenna for my pc that I was able to place in a better spot

I tried one as well with the same result. Once I read up, it made sense. Repeaters have to bounce the signal back and forth to the router across the same wifi channel, basically cutting available bandwidth in half. So slightly improved signal but less speed. An AP runs it through the cable and is a pure second signal.

 

[TravelingJ]

You could set up a repeater, if you do it right. On the camper I have a Ubnt Picostation mounted on the roof, and it pulls in the signal from another source (RV park, MiFi, etc) and then is wired to the Buffalo I have in here. Then that buffalo runs a wireless network that all my equipment connects to, and is hooked to a switch for all the wired devices (ie-every fucking A/V thing that feels the need to be online). While I haven't run a bandwidth test on it or anything, I can pull down bandwidth just about as good as if I was connected to the source myself. While hardwiring might work, in a lot of places thats not an option. Here it is the best I can do, and it's pretty solid.

 

[Jfire]

I just picked this one up yesterday. havnt installed it yet. But for the price I wasnt going to get to picky. It had great reviews and the compnay already contacted me to let me know if I needed any customer service help, they were there for me. Anyone have it?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A3YN0Z0/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[YodisMatt]

I run an older Airport (UFO looking one) Does well for me and I'll upgrade some day. It does disconnect at times, but as I said this is an older unit htta I got it in a trade for some coke glasses.