Hello,
I am considering to buy a new router to replace my Netgear WNDR3700, which I bought ~2 years ago and with which I was never really convinced. When I bought it I wanted to see first if it is enough or if I needed a better router, but due to unfortunate circumstances I couldn't send it back anymore and had to settle with it.
While I managed to get reasonable speed (40-45 Mbit down as measured with speedtest.net, my connection provides 50/2.5 down/up) out of the WLAN connection to my Desktop which is in a room one floor higher in the house after a LOT of fiddling and putting it on a more elevated position, I am still not totally happy. There are sometimes stability issues, and while they were relatively rare and not too annoying in the last months, lately they start to become worse again and I even lost connection to my WLAN router completely a few times in the last days, which I could only regain by switching to a different WLAN channel (had to access router menu with the Notebook which I have in the same room as the router). It slowly starts to get annoying.
The signal strength is not ideal. In fact even my old router (Linksys WRT54G) had a better one according to Windows (probably not ideal measurement, but I didn't look at anything else back then), and according to inSSIDer 3 etc. I actually have a better signal to the neighbour house network...
Now a new situation also arrives since I will probably upgrade my connection to 100/2.5 for same price, maybe even 150/5. I don't think my Netgear will be able to give me anything near that bandwith. So I consider to buy a new router. I also might have to replace my somewhat old WLAN PCI adapter (Asus WL-130N), but I need your advice to decide on that.
Because of the distance and the walls inbetween I assume that 2,4 GHz will be the way to go rather than 5 GHz, but you may correct me. I cannot test 5 GHz with my current network since my adapter doesn't support 5 GHz.
I looked at the Router charts on the website and the Asus N66U seems to have the best 2,4 GHz Uplink (or do I have to look at Downlink?). The price of ~110 Euro here is quite a lot in my eyes for a router, but if it is worth it I am well considering it, if it means better stability and less annoyance with reasonable bandwith. According to the charts the difference to my WNDR3700 should be quite big? Or should I consider also other routers? Ideally I would want to avoid Netgear and D-Link though based on my previous experiences, unless you have some compelling arguments for those brands...
The WLAN serves primarily the Desktop PC I mentioned in the floor above. It also serves a Notebook which is in the same room as the router, so it should be no issue anyway, and another Desktop two floors above the router, but that one has very low priority as it is rarely used and doesn't need a very good connection.
I am considering to buy a new router to replace my Netgear WNDR3700, which I bought ~2 years ago and with which I was never really convinced. When I bought it I wanted to see first if it is enough or if I needed a better router, but due to unfortunate circumstances I couldn't send it back anymore and had to settle with it.
While I managed to get reasonable speed (40-45 Mbit down as measured with speedtest.net, my connection provides 50/2.5 down/up) out of the WLAN connection to my Desktop which is in a room one floor higher in the house after a LOT of fiddling and putting it on a more elevated position, I am still not totally happy. There are sometimes stability issues, and while they were relatively rare and not too annoying in the last months, lately they start to become worse again and I even lost connection to my WLAN router completely a few times in the last days, which I could only regain by switching to a different WLAN channel (had to access router menu with the Notebook which I have in the same room as the router). It slowly starts to get annoying.
The signal strength is not ideal. In fact even my old router (Linksys WRT54G) had a better one according to Windows (probably not ideal measurement, but I didn't look at anything else back then), and according to inSSIDer 3 etc. I actually have a better signal to the neighbour house network...
Now a new situation also arrives since I will probably upgrade my connection to 100/2.5 for same price, maybe even 150/5. I don't think my Netgear will be able to give me anything near that bandwith. So I consider to buy a new router. I also might have to replace my somewhat old WLAN PCI adapter (Asus WL-130N), but I need your advice to decide on that.
Because of the distance and the walls inbetween I assume that 2,4 GHz will be the way to go rather than 5 GHz, but you may correct me. I cannot test 5 GHz with my current network since my adapter doesn't support 5 GHz.
I looked at the Router charts on the website and the Asus N66U seems to have the best 2,4 GHz Uplink (or do I have to look at Downlink?). The price of ~110 Euro here is quite a lot in my eyes for a router, but if it is worth it I am well considering it, if it means better stability and less annoyance with reasonable bandwith. According to the charts the difference to my WNDR3700 should be quite big? Or should I consider also other routers? Ideally I would want to avoid Netgear and D-Link though based on my previous experiences, unless you have some compelling arguments for those brands...
The WLAN serves primarily the Desktop PC I mentioned in the floor above. It also serves a Notebook which is in the same room as the router, so it should be no issue anyway, and another Desktop two floors above the router, but that one has very low priority as it is rarely used and doesn't need a very good connection.