Best router responsiveness

[ledan]

Hi. I wiould like to receive advice or information on router responsiveness, i am talking about the time you click on a URL and the page begin loading and not the throughput.

I was using a Linksys WRT54G with Tomato for couple year and wanted to upgrade to N. So, I bought a D-link DIR-655 which was having higher throughput but was not faster on responsiveness. Then, I went with Linksys WRT310N which was a lot more responsiveness but was not stable. So, I went back to G with buffalo similar to the WRT54G.

I verified again the WRT310N recently but there seems to still have issue and no firmware update since last summer. So, I don't really understand why the WRT310N was so responsive and not the DIR-655 and I would like to buy a new router that is responsive. Could it be the processor type that make difference ?

What would be my choice to have one that is fast on response ?

Thanks

 

[jdabbs]

The scenario you described could be due to DNS; since you appear to be in North America I'd test the D-Link again, but this time with DNS configured on your PC as 4.2.2.2 (Verizon) and 8.8.8.8 (Google). Primary DNS is whichever results in the lowest ping. Use a site with no/few ads as a reference; if the responsiveness problem still occurs after a few visits, DNS is likely not the issue.

 

[ledan]

Weird....I didn't changed anything in my setup except changing router brand and the wrt310n was more responsive. So, DNS has been the same for all router I tried. Could it be the wireless signal quality ? I also tried a cheap D-link G that was slower than the rest.

 

[jdabbs]

Not necessarily.
Example: you have two DNS IPs provided by your ISP's DHCP lease, and one of the server IPs is bad/sluggish. Router A could just happen to favor the good one, while Router B alternates. From your perspective, Router B has problems when in reality it's Router A with undesirable behavior.

Another example: a default setting like DNS relay may not be suitable for your situation--this is a checkbox fix, but it wouldn't be resolved unless you either stumbled upon it or identified the root cause.

"My router is slow" is not a particularly useful diagnosis. My previous suggestion will rule out several possible causes, and would probably have taken less time than what it took to write this post.

 

[msl]

Also, many home routers provide themselves as the DNS server to DHCP clients. So if you are using DHCP, just swapping the router might be significantly changing your DNS settings and behaviour. Some routers may serve/proxy DNS requests more efficiently than others. As suggested already, you might want to remove this variable by configuring your PC to talk directly to a specific, good DNS server.

Edit to say... just noticed the mention of "DNS relay" above, which probably refers to exactly what I've just repeated.

 

[ledan]

Your help is really appreciated. Thanks !

I currently have a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 and a Linksys WRT310N V2 which I just bought. I tested both yesterday evening and both seems equal regarding responsiveness. So, maybe I was wrong thinking that the WRT310N was faster when I first tested it last summer.

I also tested to ping google and yahoo with automatic dns and dns set to 8.8.8.8 on my laptop. The result show higher ping when using 8.8.8.8 and almost same ping when comparing Buffalo and Linksys.

I was wondering if there are any benefits to have a router with faster processor excluding higher throughput ?

I am planning to bring back the Linksys to store because of bad reviews indicating an issue regarding slower performance because of heat. Because I only use basic feature on my router, I am wondering if better router worth extra money ?

Thanks

 

[jdabbs]

What I had in mind was after changing the DNS, visit a few websites while using the "slow" router (not pinging them). If you're done with the D-Link, don't worry about it.

Newer routers generally have an improved feature set over previous generations. Is a feature like AP isolation or better wireless performance worth replacing your router for? That's a personal decision. If the Buffalo was performing adequately, I'd probably use it until that's no longer the case.