Why would a typical person need to upgrade their Wireless G router.

[mxmaniac]

I constantly hear of people retiring their old Wireless - G routers, and getting new ones. But is this really necessary?

Considering wireless G is 54 Mbps, but most ISP's are only about 20-25
Mbps (at least around me), it seems like the router is more than capable of drawing maximum speed from the ISP, plus plenty of overhead for cross traffic between the computers. Isn't an old wireless G router more than enough for a typical single family home, or are there certain slowdowns I'm unaware of?

Also, I'm sure newer routers naturally have more internal ram, faster processers, but does this actually make any noticeable difference at all if your not reaching 54 Mbps?

Personally I have an 10 year old linksys wrt54g with openwrt firmware. I'm considering upgrading to a newer router, and also using openwrt on it, but I'm wondering if I would see any appreciable difference at all? Only reason I'm even thinking about it is I hear so many other people getting away from these old wrt54g's but I don't know why.

 

[Dahak]

from my personal view is, possible better radios for better range or support for the n or ac speeds. while g routers advertise 54Mbps, realistically you will get slower speeds. so if you cannot change the other factors that affect wireless performance, changing the router could help

for example my n router should connect at 300Mbps, but where I use my laptop it usually connects at 52/74 range. When I was on my old g router, i was getting slow b speeds on my g laptop

and I do work from my laptop a lot and moving iso's images and support files for machines that are multi-gigabtye files it even annoying on my n speeds where I have to plug in my cable to get gigabit speeds

 

[evident]

well, I sold my WRT54G and got a linksys E4200 V1 2 years ago. my main reasons were, i definitely needed gigabit LAN, which the 54G didn't have, and the wireless N which is also very useful when i'm using a laptop near my router. I also feel that the range of the router in general is much better as well. my question is, what will ac give me over n?

 

[PliotronX]

I've been able to actually max out G over a 17Mbps connection. Imperfect wireless conditions typically reduce the throughput. Firstly, the theoretical maximum throughput of G is about 18Mbps (the rule of thumb for wireless is 1/3 the advertised bandwidth). Because of real-world shortfalls (noise, physical barriers), the throughput ends up being 12-15Mbps at least in my area. N has no trouble boosting above my 17Mbps cable connection. As for LAN transfers... N is still no comparison to 100Mbps FE let alone jigglebits.

 

[JackMDS]

my question is, what will ac give me over n?

The E4200 is Dual band a/b/g/n capable.

If your client Wireless Devices are Not Dual band capable, then even the E4200 is sort of an overkill.

The difference between a/b/g/n and ac (in bandwidth term) is not that impressive. So unless you happen to have few Wireless Client that have ac c cards (rather rare at the moment) do not waste time and money wait for next year.

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@mxmaniac, typical is meaningless word when you need to make decision about technology.

The answer to your question depends on your LAN its Client Devices and the way you use it.

If your ISP provides 20-25 MB/sec., then your Wireless G is already bellow your Internet capacity.

Yeah, some G cards can score in benchmark 20-22Mb/sec when they are 3 feet away and nothing else is used. Otherwise many G system hardly do 15Mb/sec in real network use (Not clean Benchmark).

 

[azazel1024]

I've been able to actually max out G over a 17Mbps connection. Imperfect wireless conditions typically reduce the throughput. Firstly, the theoretical maximum throughput of G is about 18Mbps (the rule of thumb for wireless is 1/3 the advertised bandwidth). Because of real-world shortfalls (noise, physical barriers), the throughput ends up being 12-15Mbps at least in my area. N has no trouble boosting above my 17Mbps cable connection. As for LAN transfers... N is still no comparison to 100Mbps FE let alone jigglebits.

Actually in ideal circumstances, its more like 2/3rds rated speed once overhead is taken in to account, supposing little/no interference or competing networks.

My 300Mbps 802.11g 2.4GHz router/NIC combo easily pushes 165-180Mbps, which is well over half the advertised speed. My Asus T100 to the same (150Mbps max, as single radio) manages around 70-75Mbps, which is almost exactly half its rated speed.

At any who, figuring 1/3-1/2 isn't terrible idea, which means 20-27Mbps. There are plenty of people with faster internet connections than that, especially when you take in to account probably connecting at lower speeds if you are a bit of a distance from your router.

That 165-180Mbps on my laptop turns in to around 20-30Mbps if I wonder to the other side of my house (well, assuming I didn't have my second AP on the other side of my house on). If that was 802.11g, I'd probably be lucky to connect, or if I could, I might get only 2-5Mbps speeds.

I happen to be fortunate to have a 75/35 internet connection, so actually my T100 often can't quite max my internet connection on 802.11n 1:1 40MHz (150Mbps).

That said, plenty of people also have a real LAN going, not simply a single device or a couple of devices connecting through their router to their internet. I have a desktop, server, laptop, tablet plus my wife's iPad 2 and we both have a couple of iPhones excluding my kids tablets which pretty much don't transfer anything on the LAN/WLAN. All the above devices at the very least connect to the server on occasion for us to, say, grab some pictures, or songs, movies, an application, etc.

In that case, faster is better. The server can handle ~230MB/sec...so 802.11g would be just downright embaressing compared to wire speed. At least the 20-22MB/sec I can get on my laptop is some pale imitation to what the server/my desktop can do over the wire. I am very much looking forward to upgrading my routers to 802.11ac to hit 867Mbps that the Intel 7260 in my laptop is capable of. Even if that only really means around 300-400Mbps on a cleaner connection, that'll still be nice when I have to transfer a dozen GBs of pictures from a photoshoot and don't want to wander over to grab a cable and wander over to a LAN drop to plug in.

For 11ac speeds though, it just depends, like everything.

Again, back to my laptop. With an Intel 2230 card in it, I was hitting 150-160Mbps on Windows 8.1. With the Intel 7260AC card I am hitting 165-180Mbps under "ideal" use cases, but even a room or so over and maybe 15-20ft, I can still hit those speeds with no slow down. Get 2-3 walls and some more distance and the speed drops off. I haven't been able to try 802.11ac yet, but I've seen a relatively large number of people with the same 7260AC card and TP-Link C7 Archers and a variety of Asus 802.11ac routers easily hitting 300-400Mbps. That is a rough doubling in speed, at least from what I am currently seeing.

Its no where near the quadrupling of speed you'd likely see moving from 802.11g to 300Mbps 802.11n, but a rough doubling (at least when fairly close to the router) is nothing to sneeze at and prices aren't that high.

I don't know what your budget is, but a TP Link C7 Archer is only $99 and there are a number of other AC1200+ routers that are under $100. Seems kind of like a waste to spend, maybe, $50 on a resonably capable 802.11n router when you can find similar 802.11ac routers for the same price or only a few bucks more.

 

[Doppel]

I have the same router and also a 20 mbps down.

My devices "connect" at 36 or 54. I am able to get mid/high teens at speedtest.net. So, it would seem my router is fine.

However, I noticed the other day that everything for no apparent reason to me was slow as hell. it does that sometimes. Speed test was 2 mbps down even with my laptop next to the router. I then plugged my laptop hardwired into a switch that is plugged into the router. Still 2 mbps down. However, web pages were FLYING. That tells me that the wireless aspect of the 54g is struggling. Even though my network was still swamped/crap because of some unknown reason, if I hard-wired it was cranking, so what I thought was a bottleneck in my ISP was not.

This is a somewhat similar experience to another I had lately. Was at somebody's house and their *wired* desktop was crap slow like it had a ton of rubbish on it. We replaced their router with a $180 Asus AC router (huge overkill) and plugged that in and it was as if they had a new machine; page loads magnitudes better. So, going from an old wired router to a new wired one made a world of difference.

Anyway, yeah I am replacing my 54g soonish. I am cheap so RT-N56U seems the one for me.

More than this the signal on the wrt54g drops ferociously as range grows even a little.

I don't know what your budget is, but a TP Link C7 Archer is only $99 and there are a number of other AC1200+ routers that are under $100. Seems kind of like a waste to spend, maybe, $50 on a resonably capable 802.11n router when you can find similar 802.11ac routers for the same price or only a few bucks more.

My concern is, from researching on and off for a few months, that the majority of routers have a lot of bad reviews. Asus seems to be one of the only (or only) brand consistently not pissing off a lot of people for various reasons.

Edit: well actually that tplink is pretty well reviewed...

 

[John Connor]

I have a WRT54GL flashed with DD-WRT and using WIFI and doing a speed test at speedtest.net I get 20 MBPS. That's what my speed is from Comcast. With a LAN connected computer I get 28 Mbps. Network transfers are like 2 MB/S. I don't do much of any network transfers since I don't have a NAS and I shut down NetBIOS and all that crap. To me there are two reason why you would want to upgrade an old G router and they are:

A) If you transfer data over a local network like a NAS.

B) You want a IPv6 compatible device.

 

[_Rick_]

First reason: In urban areas 2.4GHz is overcrowded. Especially in small apartments 5GHz works much better.
Second reason: The effective bandwidth is often insufficient to stream HD mkvs.
Even with 802.11n the effective bandwidth through a few walls and a ceiling is going to be rubbish, even at 2.4GHz.
Finally, wireless routers with integrated modems may not keep up with upgrades to the actual infrastructure. Fiber or VDSL swiftly render them obsolete.
And ultimately: Snake oil, many consumer routers are rubbish, so might as well see if a new one doesn't make the overall situation slightly more bearable. And feature creep.

Plenty of reasons really.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, I upgraded to get 5GHz. It's all about the LAN behavior, not the internet connection.

Even at the same "n" speeds, actual transfer rates are 1.5-2x as fast. Getting ac support in the bargain was just gravy.

Also, my old router was starting to act a little wonky at 6+ years old.

 

[jumpncrash]

I just bought a new wireless router to act as an acess point for the back of the house because my current one was really horrible. It's only when I installed it and looked at my main router that I realised it had wireless N. So for me, there would be no advantage as I use wires for almost all of my systems. The only thing that isn't wired is my wii, and my phones. My roommate uses the wireless though, but i don't think he would notice one way or another.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Isn't an old wireless G router more than enough for a typical single family home, or are there certain slowdowns I'm unaware of?

Newer (consumer) wireless routers generally have faster processors, more memory, and consume less power. However, let's set that aside for a moment and compare 802.11g to newer 802.11 variants.

802.11g is capable of transmitting a raw 54Mb/s in a perfect environment with no outside interference and perfect reception by both the sender and receiver. However, in the real world, you cannot avoid interference, and you also have the protocol overhead from 802.11g, IP, TCP, and whatever application you're using. I'm not going to delve into a hugely technical explanation, but in my experience, a solid real-world connection (i.e., one with full 'bars') will give you about half of the theoretical bandwidth. That may sound like enough to handle a 20-25Mb/s broadband connection, but also keep in mind the following:

• Your broadband connection is probably full duplex (i.e., you can send and receive data at the exact same time), whereas your wireless network is not.
• Your wireless network's bandwidth is also being consumed by internal network communication
• You can still suffer split-second interference that is enough to impact your bandwidth, but not enough to trigger some type of visual notification on your computer that your connection quality is degraded.

In short, 802.11g will probably be a performance bottleneck if you have a 25Mb/s connection.

Now let's say that you upgrade to something newer, like 802.11n. There's two benefits:

1. There's the obvious benefit of increased bandwidth due to the newer standard. Also, newer wireless standards tends to be more effective at dealing with interference and signal attenuation.
2. Newer standards make use of the 5GHz band, which is much less congested.

Finally, there's a community benefit. The microwave wireless spectrum is a public good that you share with your immediate neighbors. If you upgrade your wireless network to use a newer, more efficient standard, all other things being equal (i.e., your bandwidth usage stays the same) you will consume less of the wireless spectrum because you you will finish transmitting faster, which reduces usage on that frequency band. As your neighbors upgrade, all other things being equal, their usage will also decrease. This reduces the amount of interference on the band, which makes the connection that much faster and more stable.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Finally, there's a community benefit. The microwave wireless spectrum is a public good that you share with your immediate neighbors. If you upgrade your wireless network to use a newer, more efficient standard, all other things being equal (i.e., your bandwidth usage stays the same) you will consume less of the wireless spectrum because you you will finish transmitting faster, which reduces usage on that frequency band. As your neighbors upgrade, all other things being equal, their usage will also decrease. This reduces the amount of interference on the band, which makes the connection that much faster and more stable.

I suppose, in theory, that could be true, but as far as N300 goes in the 2.4Ghz spectrum, and Wireless AC goes in the 5Ghz spectrum, they both chew up MORE wireless bandwidth for the newer standards, not less.

They even have an N450 for 2.4Ghz now!

 

[Doppel]

OH hell yes. Well, further to my last post this morning I replaced my 9 year old wrt54g with an RT-N66R (yeah I actually bought it at bestbuy). Anyway, I am now able to hit 21 mbps download speed on my 20 connection (best I could do in the past was high teens when wireless). Also web pages are now loading as quickly on wireless as they did prior wired. That old linksys was a great work horse for nearly a decade but now I've taken it out back and put it down.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I suppose, in theory, that could be true, but as far as N300 goes in the 2.4Ghz spectrum, and Wireless AC goes in the 5Ghz spectrum, they both chew up MORE wireless bandwidth for the newer standards, not less.

No, they don't. They may allow the use of larger channels to increase the amount of bandwidth you can use, but I was referring to the efficiency of standard (i.e., the amount of data you can transfer for a given amount of spectrum). Assuming a 20MHz channel (which is the normal size of your typical WiFi channel), 802.11n can transfer more data per second than 802.11g. The fact that 802.11n allows the use of 40MHz channels is an added bonus.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OH hell yes. Well, further to my last post this morning I replaced my 9 year old wrt54g with an RT-N66R (yeah I actually bought it at bestbuy). Anyway, I am now able to hit 21 mbps download speed on my 20 connection (best I could do in the past was high teens when wireless). Also web pages are now loading as quickly on wireless as they did prior wired. That old linksys was a great work horse for nearly a decade but now I've taken it out back and put it down.

Feels good, doesn't it? Not to be bottle-necked anymore by your router, I mean.

I have 50/25 FIOS, and with video services, they give you extra, so I get 57/33.

My Rev. F FIOS router gives me maybe 30Mbit at best on N. I have an E2500 with Tomato connected to it as a secondary router, and I can get my full 50Mbit or so throughput over its 2.4Ghz N300 signal with my netbook.

 

[razel]

It's only necessary only if you notice issues speed issues or disconnections as more people connect. It's also ABSOLUTELY necessary if your wireless router has no firmware updates for vulnerabilities.

Otherwise there is no speed improvement. The latency between a/b/g/n/ac will be the same. Wireless travels at the speed of light. It's just your max speed that changes. 54mbps is a bi-directional total. It's really 27mbps one way. So if you are rocking a 25mbps cable internet you are at max if you add overhead.

I'm still rocking a 2005 Belkin Wireless G. Surprisingly it is not susceptible to any vulnerabilities. It is also dd-wrt upgradable, but I end up giving up some features. Actually I end up having to choose between wired or wireless only. Weird, but that thing is nearly as old as my niece.

Anyhow... I have used and installed newer n routers for family and only noticed what I stated in the 1st paragraph. The more devices that connect, cheaper routers can slow down, begin to disconnect clients or outright reboot. That's a case to buy a 'better' one.

The more important one though, is addressing vulnerabilities. I ended up retiring 2-3 routers because firmware updates stopped and they were not upgradable to dd-wrt, open-wrt or tomato.

Otherwise, since you are open-wrt and you have no issues, keep using your router.

 

[azazel1024]

If you believe your router has no vulnerabilities, I have some nice bottom land for sale...

As for latency, not true. A lot of the latency involved is the router actually ROUTING the traffic, which involves the router CPU having to calculate things like pathing, network address translation and such forth and then forward the packets. So a newer router very much CAN have an impact on latency.

It shouldn't have a huge impact, but it CAN have an impact.

 

[ITT Tech]

Anything above 802.11 G is a marketing gimmick. The Freemasons at the IEEE want to increase our network efficiency so we watch more movies and become too distracted to see that they are consolidating the banking system to form a new world order.

It's a system of lies and greed.