Is my current setup good enough?

[David T.]

Hey everybody,

Newbie here to all this router/networking stuff. I've been luring for quite a while trying to learn what I can, but to be honest, it's still a bit overwhelming.

With that in mind, I thought I would start at the lowest level and try and explain what I have and try and learn if what I have is fine, or if I can do better... and how and why.

Anyhow, my router is a DIR 655 located on the second floor of our house and we have a 10Mpbs connection to the web. As far as I can tell, it's been a good router. Never drops connection and seems pretty fast at most tasks.

We have 1 Windows laptop, an Ipad Air, and an Android Tablet all with "n" cards in them (no home network... yet ). All three are used on the second floor within 15 ft. of the router, and downstairs usually right underneath the router.

I downloaded and installed inSIDDer on my laptop. According to insider, there are not conflicts with any other routers in the neighborhood and gives a link score of 100. When I am upstairs inSIDDER registers between 34 and 37 dBm and downstairs it registers between 47 and 50 dBm. Are these numbers good, bad, or meaningless?

When I run Speedtest.net it gives a score of 10.1 to 10.3 Mbps in both locations. I'm guessing these are good numbers and it sounds like I'm getting what I'm paying for from my internet provider... correct?

With the above, would getting a better router be of any benefit in speed and/or range?

The one "fly in the ointment" might be that I do plan on getting a new MacBook Pro soon that I believe has AC1750 capabilities.

Thanks for your patients and any advice you can provide.

Dave

 

[stevech]

The dBm numbers are received signal strength measured at a client device using the tool (InSSIDer). More negative numbers are weaker signals, e.g., -50dBm is 10dB weaker than -40dB.

The numbers you posted are very good signal strengths. When you see -80dBm the signal is getting too weak to have good margins for fading and good data rates... stronger signal = faster data rates. Numbers around -40 to -30 mean your device is quite near the router.

Note too that the received signal strength at the ROUTER is not displayed by admin software in most routers. The client devices, esp. handhelds, often transmit with weaker signals that does a WiFi router/AP. So the to-router direction can be the speed constraint in some situations.

you'll always tradeoff speed for signal strength in most any wireless systems. WiFi is speed-rate adaptive - meaning it automatically selects a speed based on most recent signal strengths - which may vary for handhelds.

The number of nearby SSIDs detected is not very important... it how heavily used an SSID is that is within 3 channels of your choice of channels. And that usage isn't often displayed by freeware tools.

 

[David T.]

Thanks very much Steve,

Do you see any advantages to getting a router with better range and transfer rates in my case? I mean, I only have a 10Mbps internet connection, and Speedtest.net confirms that I'm getting that. So, can I expect something better with a high performance router?

That aside, I may get a new router anyway so I can start learning more about them and networking. Plus, I can keep the DIR-655 as a spare, as it seems to work just fine.

BTW, I am a computer programmer, so some of this stuff actually does make sense.

Thanks again
Dave

 

[stevech]

IMO, if you have 10-15Mbps ISP service, then the only reason for a costly WiFi router is if you move lots of large files, frequently, PC to PC within your own LAN and do so via WiFi.
that's rare.

Since you are a professional, and want to learn more, I recommend you get a non-Consumer grade WiFi router and ethernet switch (unmanaged). Repurpose your D-Link to be an Access point, integrate that. In enterprise networking they don't use combo router + WiFi all in one; they use access points (APs) connected by cat5 to a switch then to a high end wired-only router. You can learn about how routers do NAT, port forwarding/triggering, QoS, VLANs, etc.

A recommendation would be Cradlepoint, Engenius, ZyXel, some ASUS. Learning about VLANs is a good thing to do. Most consumer routers don't do VLANs.

 

[David T.]

That's what I figured... a high powered router would be a waste of money in my situation. I don't even have the computers networked yet, but plan to when I get the Mac.

I going to take your advice on the second part of your post, as that sounds like I would learn alot... not a waste of money. However, that's probably going to create a LOT more questions.

Thanks a bunch!
Dave