XPost: alt.windows7.general, microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
NetNut wrote:
Six months of AT&T crap is making me ripe for a new provider.
Looking at Spectrum. Supposedly Fiber in my area and cheaper for faster internet and phone too. They will take over and allow me to use my
current phone number.
But, they provide only a modem unless for $5.00/month they provide a
Netgear N900.
I would rather make them responsible for a modem/router that use mine.
However, the big question in all of this is how fast is their WiFi electronics ?
I run Amped WiFi Ananlytics inSSIDer (free tool) on my PC and see that
the AT&T WiFi speed is less that "Max Rate" 200. People around me have faster WiFi speeds.
I have a high power modem/router that has demonstrated "Max Rate" 600
speed.
This speed seems to be an internal speed of the modem/router and the
ability to handle multiple wifi signals quickly.
Can someone explain "Max Rate" better ?
And how do I find this speed rating of the Netgear N900 ?
And what is the power rating of the N900 ?
My Amped modem/router is 900 mw power and 500 or 600 speed.
https://www.amazon.ca/NETGEAR-N900-Gigabit-Router-WNDR4500/dp/B00HEX851C
Dual Band
Faster Wi-Fi speed - up to 900 Mbps (some on each band???)
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/31603-netgear-wndr4500-n900-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-router-reviewed
two BCM4331 Single-Chip 802.11n Dual-Band 3x3 SoCs
external power amps and low-noise front-ends (antennas taped to lid)
Broadcom BCM4706 is used, which is a 600 MHz MIPS32 74K Core (Routing processor)
128 MB of RAM, 128MB of flash.
Routing Performance
WAN - LAN 768Mbps <=== Compare to Internet service.
wifi part could slow this down
"The WNDR4500 is Wi-Fi Certified and properly defaulted to
20 MHz bandwidth mode ("Up to 217 Mbps" in NETGEAR-speak)
on the 2.4 GHz radio on power-up.
The 5 GHz band came up in 40 MHz mode or "Up to 450 Mbps"
in NETGEAR lingo."
"three-stream N can only provide significantly higher throughput
under very strong signal conditions (same room or next-room)"
[ The 2.4GHz might penetrate the whole house, the 5GHz might not ]
"The results here are *not knock-your-socks-off good*.
On the contrary, the two stream 2.4 GHz downlink results are downright
awful, putting the 4500 at the bottom of the Average 2.4 GHz Downlink
chart when filtered to show only dual-band routers and fourth from
the bottom when all tested routers are included."
Etc...
*******
When presenting these questions, more info is helpful.
1) For each computer, tablet, or phone, indicate minimally
make and model. If you know it's 802.11N, 802.11AC,
MIMO 2x2 or 3x3 or whatever, those details are helpful.
End to end WAN to LAN (netflix) is only as good as
the weakest component.
You can have the worlds most powerful router box
with 1024QAM, 500W amplifiers, and if your laptop
only has 802.11b, then of course the overall result
will suck ("can't do Netflix on laptop").
Wifi engineering requires good kit on each end.
2) Tell us what the upload/download provided by the
new ISP is going to be. Is it 350/20, 15/1 or what ?
If the new service is "fiber" or "fake fiber", it might
be considerably better than any of your computers, so that
no single computer in the house could use all of it.
Maybe three people will need to use Netflix at the
same time to swamp it.
To get better household coverage, might require more
than one networking box. If you had a 10,000 sqft
home consisting of a single floor, and long long hallways,
then that's going to take three or four boxes with
antennas on top.
"Power" is limited to a certain EIRP for unlicensed
FCC operation at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. I presume the limitation
is per-antenna, but don't know that for a fact. So the only
way to get "moar power" than your Amped, is "moar antennas"
running independent signals in MIMO or beam forming or
whatever fake tech they're selling today. Too much power
causes multipath, and MIMO battles against that by
finding acceptable signal on one antenna and not on
a second antenna. And so on. It's not possible to make
blanket statements like "six antennas will be enough",
because your house could have steel plate 2x4s like they
use in office buildings to hold the drywall. And that
would knock any Wifi way down, and need a Wifi box per
room!!!
For a laptop, you could buy a newer Wifi receiver and
plug to a USB port. However, USB2 has a 30MB/sec limit
which is 240Mbit/sec, and could "limit consumption"
from a "GbE" service. That's if you're engineering it
so the laptop can download at 100MB/sec or something.
The laptop may need to be upgraded to USB3 so good
USB3 Wifi receivers could be used. And then, depending
on the device, the laptop may not be "plunk down on sofa"
convenient.
The smallnetbuild site is a goldmine of information.
Not all the reviews are written as well as might be,
but fortunately in this case, the "N900" review has
all the info you need to make a purchase decision.
Then, think carefully about how poorly each individual
device is outfitted, before buying a "9 antenna Asus".
A 9 antenna Asus only helps if each machine has the
very latest Wifi device on it. If a laptop has 11g,
then naturally all Wifi routers "will seem to suck".
In Google, I searched for
site:smallnetbuilder.com Netgear N900 review
That's how you mine the site for information.
HTH,
Paul
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)