Yet Another what router should I buy thread

[blackangst1]

I'll get straight to the point. I currently have a DIR 655, and has served me well. But my new setup is choking it.

I live in a 2400sf house, office (main PC and router) are upstairs in the office. I also have an HTPC downstairs with a wifi card. I am almost always downloading...something, and use the wifi connection to transfer media from the office PC to the HTPC, as well as occasionally stream from the office PC to the HTPC for viewing. It seems if I have alot of concurrent downloads going on, and I try to stream something (usually DTS/FLAC quality) I get stuttering. A reboot of the router and stopping the downloads fixes it. I dont understand why downloading off the internet would affect streaming to the HTPC, unless Im stressing out the processor.

So, Im looking for something beefy that will handle the high volume of wifi media, and downloading.

Any suggestions?

 

[Nebor]

I've been through my own little wifi learning experience lately, and I doubt that your router is your problem. Check your router's Status tab, wifi subtab and see what speed your PC is actually connected at. I'd wager that you're running out of wifi bandwidth.

FWIW my home network is a DIR-655 connected to a cable modem on WAN, and a HTPC, Yamaha Receiver, Samsung TV & Netgear Readynas Ultra 4 via cat6. I bought D-link's external antenna since all the hardware is shut up and hidden from view, adversely impacting the signal. Then I've got a Diamond WR300N Wireless Extender upstairs, directly above the router. I've got another HDTV, a Sony Dash and an HP Envy Printer connected to that, and then in the office I have a d-link DAP-1522 wireless bridge, to which my desktop PC is connected w/ cat6. There's also a wireless N laptop & cell phone that work anywhere in the house.

This was an evolving setup. I started with just the DIR-655, and a DWA-552 in my desktop PC upstairs. The upstairs appliance could connect to wifi ok, but the DWA-552 had severe driver problems which I spent about a week fighting, before realizing it was hopeless, and buying the DAP-1522. Unfortunately the DAP-1522 has no external antenna, so reception was not great. Around 20% according to the router. So, I bought the Diamond WR300N network extender, realizing that this would half my bandwidth, but reasoning that a stable 150mb connection would be better than an unstable 300mb connection. This worked very well. The extender got about 80% signal to my router, and my bridge got about 80% signal to the extender. Then, for the hell of it, I bought the external antenna for the DIR-655. This boosted my signal to the extender up to 100%! I was impressed. I was getting a good 120-130 megabit connection from my desktop PC upstairs. I tried taking the extender out of the equation, but I guess the lack of external antenna cripples the DAP-1522. I put the extender back online and I've been happily chugging along ever since. I can stream blu-ray ISOs from my NAS upstairs without issue. This all happened over the past 2 months.

Like I said, check your actual connection speed to your router, I bet you don't have the bandwidth to do what you want to do.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OP, when you say "Downloading", do you mean HTTP downloads, FTP downloads, or BitTorrent downloads? BitTorrent downloads tend to cripple routers, due to the vast number of connections that they utilize. It chokes the router's RAM, with all of the connection-tracking tables.

Myself, I have a 25/25 (which connected at 30/25) FIOS connection. I have the FIOS router in my bedroom, and then I have my main DD-WRT1 router connected to the FIOS router in the DMZ, and then connected via WDS to two other identical WNR2000v2 routers.

DD-WRT2 is in my living room, and connected to a gigabit switch, which is connected to two desktop machines, a gigabit NAS, and a networked printer.

I also added a DD-WRT3, which is in the opposite corner of the living room, connected to a desktop with four GPUs, that does Distributed Computing.

I also have a laptop that connects wirelessly. All of my WDS routers share the same SSID, channel, and password, so I cannot say to which router the laptop connects to.

I have streamed 1080P MKV files from my NAS to my HTPC, which is wired directly to the DD-WRT1 router in my bedroom. The link to the NAS is across the WDS link to DD-WRT2. It works great for the most part, but occasionally, it stutters.

I get about 3MB/sec between the laptop and the NAS. (13MB/sec on the wired desktops connected through gigabit switch.)

I get my full download bandwidth on my desktop rigs connected to the gigabit switch to the DD-WRT2 WDS router. Although it seems like my upload gets reduced for some reason.

Looking at the DD-WRT status pages on each router, generally, they are connected at 144 or 130 MBit/sec.

 

[blackangst1]

Thanks for the input guys. Nebor: I'll check my settings tonite when I get home. I dont have nearly as many devices connected as you do so you may be on to something there. My usual connection is 2-3MB/s at about 70% signal from my HTPC downstairs.

Larry: Im downloading torrents. And yah, I know they choke routers. Perhaps I need to throttle uTorrent a bit and see if that helps.

Thanks again for the input, and I welcome further comments.

 

[blackangst1]

Well I just bought a Linksys E4200. I'll use my DIR655 as an access point downstairs.

 

[jruh]

Nebor,

I also have a DIR655 tucked into a hallway closet. I didn't know I could get an external antenna, that might benefit me as well. I find myself needing to reset it every day or so.
A little off topic but i am also considering a ReadyNAS Ultra and a Yamaha A/V receiver (RX-V671). Could you tell me how nicely these 2 items play together? This would be a fairly big investment for me. How easy is it to stream music from the NAS to the Yamaha, and would I need to have the TV on to see the menus to do it?
Right now i have a DNS-323 and it is very clumsy to stream music to my Samsung TV, requiring me to have a big TV screen on just to listen to a song. Looking for a slicker interface.

blackangst1, how do you like the new lynksys? I see it has a built in UPnP media server. Is that also DNLA? Sorry if these are dumb questions.

Thanks, John

 

[Nebor]

You're in luck, jruh. I have a ReadyNas 4 Ultra, a yamaha RX-V671 and a Samsung PN50C7000! They work great together. You can stream music and video from the readynas to the TV or the receiver. You will need a TV to look through your directories on the readynas though. But once you find what you want you can just turn the TV off (assuming disable the power on\off HDMI-CEC linking between TV & receiver.)

 

[jruh]

Thanks Nebor, exactly what I needed to know. I read someone's user review of the ReadyNAS that said the DLNA served up albums in alphabetical order rather than by track number. Have you found that to be the case?

Thanks again, John

 

[blackangst1]

Nebor,

I also have a DIR655 tucked into a hallway closet. I didn't know I could get an external antenna, that might benefit me as well. I find myself needing to reset it every day or so.
A little off topic but i am also considering a ReadyNAS Ultra and a Yamaha A/V receiver (RX-V671). Could you tell me how nicely these 2 items play together? This would be a fairly big investment for me. How easy is it to stream music from the NAS to the Yamaha, and would I need to have the TV on to see the menus to do it?
Right now i have a DNS-323 and it is very clumsy to stream music to my Samsung TV, requiring me to have a big TV screen on just to listen to a song. Looking for a slicker interface.

blackangst1, how do you like the new lynksys? I see it has a built in UPnP media server. Is that also DNLA? Sorry if these are dumb questions.

Thanks, John

John,
Te Linksys is great so far. Its giving me 30-40% faster transfer speeds over wifi, and has a bit better reception. I havent played with the UPnP media server settings, so cant answer that. Im just disappointed I cant use the DIR655 downstairs as an AP (has to be hard wired) and it cant be used as a repeater. Makes a decent enough paper weight though.