300Mbps vs 150Mbps in Wifi Router- Range difference?

[The Day Dreamer]

I am planning to buy 300Mbps Wifi router of Dlink for my house as my current TPLINk 150Mbps router have some handling issues as well.

So my question is will 300Mbps have more range in WIFI than 150Mbps one?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Emulex]

Yes and no! It depends on the power output and antenna setup to your location.

my 2.4ghz buffalo with 3 directional antenna's could push out far more bandwidth (and 3-channel wide support on 2.4ghz) - than my current airport time-capsule - and indeed I used to get more bandwidth on 2.4ghz than what I get on the Apple 5ghz due to the doubling of power output required to offset the 2.4ghz -> 5ghz band difference!

 

[azazel1024]

Depends heavily on a lot.

technically 300Mbps vs 150Mbps can make a bit of a difference as MIMO does increase range slightly.

However, it depends a lot more heavily on the antenna design, radio design, etc., etc.

In general you aren't going to see huge increases in range from a better router unless of course the old one was complete crap. Physics and FCC broadcast limitations (as well as client wifi chipset designs and battery limitations) don't care.

 

[The Day Dreamer]

1.http://www.flipkart.com/d-link-dir-600m-wireless-n150-home-router/p/itmdtg79yhtrykah?q=D-Link+DIR-600M+Wireless+N150+Home+Router&as=on&as-show=on&otracker=start&as-pos=p_1_router&pid=RTRDTG78BGXPBE3H

vs

2. http://www.flipkart.com/d-link-dir-615-wireless-n-300-router/p/itme3xwg9x9jgsyh?pid=RTRE3XW76EHCJUGH&otracker=from-search&srno=t_10&query=Dlink+router&ref=f8835d50-824e-40f7-8510-2c3fdfc5d2cf

Does the 2nd model seem like a better option?

 

[azazel1024]

Neither.

Frankly DLink is generally not a good router manufacturer. They generally rank near the bottom along with Belkin and Trendnet.

Asus and Netgear (Linksys sometimes too, though some of their products really miss the mark) tend to be around the top tier with TP-Link being the bargin "good" manufacturer.

Considering the general price difference of possibly only a few bucks, I'd steer clear of DLink.

 

[The Day Dreamer]

Currently owning TPLink which is not able to handle many connections. I am confused now. Maybe I should look for ASUS ones.

Edit- Finalising this one - http://www.flipkart.com/asus-rt-n12-d1-router/p/itmdrmgyhdgqgfce?pid=RTRDRMGYGV73A3XJ&otracker=from-search&srno=t_1&query=wifi+router&ref=d0f6e230-9bf2-403e-87a2-63fabf93a7da

I hope ASUS gives me an awesome experience in quality like TWO of my ASUS laptops have been giving.

 

[azazel1024]

A cheap router is a cheap router no matter what. What are your actual requirements?

The N-12 is a fairly decent low cost router. I'd personally look at the TP-Link WDR3600 as it has much higher performance, plus 5GHz.

 

[smitbret]

A cheap router is a cheap router no matter what. What are your actual requirements?

The N-12 is a fairly decent low cost router. I'd personally look at the TP-Link WDR3600 as it has much higher performance, plus 5GHz.

I would agree with this assessment. I had a D-Link DIR-825 that was my main router for about 3-4 years. I replaced it with a a TP-Link Archer C7 and get about twice the range on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz. More stable, too. The Archer C7 is basically the same as the WDR3600 but with AC wireless on the 5GHz band.

 

[The Day Dreamer]

A cheap router is a cheap router no matter what. What are your actual requirements?

The N-12 is a fairly decent low cost router. I'd personally look at the TP-Link WDR3600 as it has much higher performance, plus 5GHz.

I have 2-3 devices on average connected. One desktop via wire, 2 mobiles phones or 1 Mobile phone and Laptop via WIFI.

It should be enough, right? . Internet connection is 2Mbps(planning to upgrade to 4Mbps).

 

[azazel1024]

I have 2-3 devices on average connected. One desktop via wire, 2 mobiles phones or 1 Mobile phone and Laptop via WIFI.

It should be enough, right? . Internet connection is 2Mbps(planning to upgrade to 4Mbps).

Deffinitely. I get 204Mbps on 5GHz and 200Mbps on 2.4GHz (actually through put) in the same room with my WDR3600. Across my house through a fireplace, 3 walls and 50ft of distance I can get 20Mbps to my laptop from the WDR3600 (2.4GHz 40MHz).

So I'd think it could handle a 2Mbps or 4Mbps internet connection just fine if that is all you are looking at handling.

 

[The Day Dreamer]

Thanks everyone. Ordered the ASUS one which I mentioned above. If it causes any problem then I will give up on low range routers forever

 

[azazel1024]

I was suggesting the TP-Link WDR3600, but the Asus N-12 should have roughly comparable range. If the N-12 won't cut it for you, odds are you need more than one router/access point to cover the area you need covered.

 

[WelshBloke]

Anyone got a suggestion for something that has great wall penetration?
5GHz is a no go in my house, the signal has to go through multiple brick 18inch walls.

 

[Emulex]

I'd say an old buffalo WZR-300 with upgraded directional antenna's

here's a power output chart:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/myin...h/buffalo_wzrhpg300nh_peak_output_compare.jpg

 

[azazel1024]

Anyone got a suggestion for something that has great wall penetration?
5GHz is a no go in my house, the signal has to go through multiple brick 18inch walls.

yes, this

Multiple access points.

Pretty much only thing viable if you have several brick or concrete walls that the signal has to punch through. The difference between an okay router/AP and the most awesome one in the universe is going to be negligible with masonry/concrete walls. At least many of them.

If you cannot run wires, consider MoCA bridges if you have coax wiring through the house and if not, get some powerline adapters to hook the APs up to (or get all in one powerline and APs).

Powerline and MoCA won't give you tons of speed, but seed a few (maybe 1 per 800-1,000sq feet for masonry/concrete construction?) around and you should be able to get pretty stable 30-50Mbps wireless speeds.

 

[WelshBloke]

yes, this

Multiple access points.

Pretty much only thing viable if you have several brick or concrete walls that the signal has to punch through. The difference between an okay router/AP and the most awesome one in the universe is going to be negligible with masonry/concrete walls. At least many of them.

If you cannot run wires, consider MoCA bridges if you have coax wiring through the house and if not, get some powerline adapters to hook the APs up to (or get all in one powerline and APs).

Powerline and MoCA won't give you tons of speed, but seed a few (maybe 1 per 800-1,000sq feet for masonry/concrete construction?) around and you should be able to get pretty stable 30-50Mbps wireless speeds.

Yeah my home network has a mixture of cat5e, powerline and wireless stuff. I also have a craptacular wifi extender which tends to cause all sorts of havoc and needs regular rebooting (linksys RE1000).
Maybe I'll look into getting a better extender.

What sort of speeds does MoCA give?

I suspect that my powerline stuff would be fast enough if two parts of the house didn’t have different ages of wiring. Is there a way to 'bridge' those two circuits with out letting out the magic smoke?

 

[azazel1024]

Most MoCA bridges are limited to their fast ethernet ports (so 100Mbps before protocol overheads). Of course if your coax is really crappy, it'll slow things down. Also, shared medium and half-duplex, just like powerline and wireless.

MoCA 1.1 is technically 170Mbps, but again, most are fast ethernet ports.

I've tested the MoCA bridge I have (Actiontec ECB2500 I bought used) and managed about 91Mbps give or take a tiny bit. I use it as a MoCA bridge for my FIOS DVR.

As for bridging the circuits, no, no way.

 

[WelshBloke]

Most MoCA bridges are limited to their fast ethernet ports (so 100Mbps before protocol overheads). Of course if your coax is really crappy, it'll slow things down. Also, shared medium and half-duplex, just like powerline and wireless.

MoCA 1.1 is technically 170Mbps, but again, most are fast ethernet ports.

I've tested the MoCA bridge I have (Actiontec ECB2500 I bought used) and managed about 91Mbps give or take a tiny bit. I use it as a MoCA bridge for my FIOS DVR.

As for bridging the circuits, no, no way.

Ah, cheers.

My powerline stuff is running at about 250Mbps at the slowest link (which is annoyingly my PC to the router) so I guess I'm at the best I'll get.

 

[azazel1024]

Ah, cheers.

My powerline stuff is running at about 250Mbps at the slowest link (which is annoyingly my PC to the router) so I guess I'm at the best I'll get.

250Mbps link speed, or 250mbps of actual transfer/payload speed? Powerline is a lot like wifi (well, a little worse in some ways), so odds are good if you have 250Mbps link speed, you are probably only getting 80-100Mbps of actual transfer rate on that link. Which still isn't bad and is in the ballpark of MoCA ability (because fast ethernet ports).

Of course since it is all a shared medium, you could break it up by having one or two things on MoCA and one or two things on Powerline.

Like maybe streamers/entertainment center stuff on MoCA and your access points on powerline.

 

[Emulex]

Powerline is 90% Packet loss at actual rated speed. IE 500meg powerline = 50megabit sustained TCP at a decent length of run. UDP gets much higher speed but loss is high.

 

[azazel1024]

Powerline is 90% Packet loss at actual rated speed. IE 500meg powerline = 50megabit sustained TCP at a decent length of run. UDP gets much higher speed but loss is high.

Not really, but sometimes. I've seen it that bad, I've also seen as high as 40% yield on powerline. IE link rate of 200Mbps, yield of 80Mbps, on TCP, but also as low as 20Mbps. Typically I see in the 25% range, so a link rate of 200Mbps would correspond to around 50Mbps.

It isn't simply packet loss, powerline like Wifi has significant amounts of overhead due to forward error correction. Even if there were ZERO packet losses, this eats about 20-30% of your link rate just dealing with parity data.