Good Routers

Demon_Skeith

Demon_Skeith

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Well after 8 faithful years of service I think my router is finally going out, I'm getting a download speed of 30 on my main PC but I can barely get 8 on download for my wireless via my laptop and thats an hour after I spent playing with settings to get it like that.

Just wondering if anyone here knows of any good routers to get or look at? (max price is $80.)
 
It could be the wireless card on your laptop which is dying which is causing the slow wireless speeds. There are USB Wifi adapters which you can use to connect to wifi.

The Wireless signals on desktop PCs are usually better than laptops because a lot of desktop wifi adapters have bigger, and stronger parts like antennae, and uses more power to connect to Wifi because it has unlimited power from the wall's power outlet instead of a laptop which needs to save power, so it does not use all the battery's power quickly.

I heard good things about the TP-LINK TL-WR841N Wireless N300 Home Router for $20.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
my PC is wired, so that will always be good and I did test my laptop and found it works better with other routers.
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Have you tried testing your router in a different location, and connection like the locations of the other routers, and also compare the wired, and wireless speeds of the routers?

Maybe there is interference like other nearby routers, radio waves from cordless phones, microwaves, and radios from your neighbors which maybe slowing down your wireless signal speed.
 
Almost every time I've spent less than a hundred the router hasn't worked properly (minus when I bought a Linksys WRT54G which I still paid 80 plus tax for...)

Every other time the bandwidth has been terrible (it hasn't been able to deliver anywhere close to my actual available speed. I had a 160 kilobyte real world speed, with those cheaper routers I wouldn't get more than 80 kilobytes per second.)

The setup, while quick and easy, required constant tweaking and modification. (I had to constantly fight with the Linksys WRT160N to get it to work... Like I'd have to turn the router off every day when I turned my laptop on before it would connect.)

Port forwarding didn't work (The WRT160N's port forwarding simply didn't work, though the TP-Link TL-WR741ND's did but it had other issues.)

It wasn't until I breached $140 range that the routers actually worked well. I bought a D-link DIR655 which cost $150, and although it's setup was a bit rocky at first... it did work great afterwards. Though when I replaced it, I went even further up the price point and bought an Asus RT-AC66U for $200 (plus tax). At this point though there were no issues at all. It took exactly 30 seconds to set up, the range is huge, I have amazing uptime and almost never have to reset the router. (Even with 6 laptops, 3 smartphones, a tablet and multiple gaming consoles all hitting it at once.) And it's able to easily stream video from one to another without any kind of network slowdown/interference or performance hit. 


So honestly? I'd suggest spending the extra money and buying a more expensive one. I've had really good luck with the Asus line of products.
So their RT-N56U router may be of interest if you're budget conscious, though it normally sells for $120 you could probably get it for $80. I would sort of recommend that you bump up to the RT-N66U (which normally sells for $180, but you could probably get it for $120) simply because it's a higher quality router with a large dedicated pool of ram (so you wouldn't have to reset it for weeks or even months), more powerful cooling system and larger range (compared to the N56U). 

EDIT - I posted the wrong model number for the TP-link router I had (I had a TL-WR741ND, not a TL-WR542G) and it did have port forwarding that did in fact work (though it had other issues regardless).
 
Sometimes it's just a matter of luck. I mean the Linksys WRT160N I bought was supposed to be a decent router... but the thing just didn't work. (And it wasn't exactly a cheap router either. It could just have been a lemon though. But at the time I was frustrated and tired of swapping routers. I'd gone through like 4 routers in 3 weeks. So I wasn't interested in exchanging it for yet another of the same name and potentially same problems. So I went up in price and bought the D-link DIR655. Which worked fine from Oct 2009 to Mar 2014.)

That's the router I bought. (I bought it a year ago though when it's price was $200 and there really weren't many deals on for it. ) But you could get it or it's slightly less expensive (but still equally worthwhile) cousin the RT-N66U. 

I bought the AC66U because my laptop and phone both have 802.11AC  so that I could take advantage of that transfer speed between them (plus so if others got aC enabled devices they could make use of that speed too). But if you don't have anything (or only one thing) with Wireless AC then it might not be worth it for you to spend that extra to buy the more expensive AC66U router when you could easily do with the N66U router. 
 
Demon_Skeith said:
Nothing's changed in the last few weeks to affect anything and where my router's location is the only place it can be at.
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Is it possible to change your laptop's location to be closer to the router, or buy longer networking cables for your modem, and desktop PC to connect to the router, and use an extension cord to extend the power cord on the power adapter?
 
froggyboy604 said:
Is it possible to change your laptop's location to be closer to the router, or buy longer networking cables for your modem, and desktop PC to connect to the router, and use an extension cord to extend the power cord on the power adapter?
Click to expand...
I did take my laptop up to my router, speeds didn't change.
 
I got the ASUS RT-AC66U Dual-Band Wireless-AC1750 Gigabit Router for $90 (after prime membership, gift card and free money on my credit card) and just installed it tonight.

This was before I set it up:

result_zpsytnrqrhx.png


and after:

result2_zpsz8igkbfx.png


BOOM! Instant worth of buying it :D (near same speeds on my hardwired PC)

Though it did take me a bit to set up (modem had to be reset a few times.) and then my laptop didn't take the WPA2 security auth -_- so after some googling I was able to get that set up for nearly a hours worth of work (my luck.)
 
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