UKC

I'm pretty certain many of you on here will know more about this than me so can hopefully help.

I live in the sticks and have had to accept poor internet speeds from BT (around 2mbs) up until now. Another internet provider has laid fibre optic cable along our road and can offer internet up to 1000mbs. Obviously I don't need that sort of speed for home internet but they offer other packages (50mbs/100mbs/250mbs/1000mbs)

Some neighbours have installed and are getting the quoted speed at the router but losing a lot of speed from the wireless set up. (50mbs at router but only 20mbs when doing a speed test over wireless). I'm assuming this is because they are using old technology, in which case...what should I be looking for as a wireless router? Usage will be internet/netflix HD and telephone over internet. Looking online didn't really help me as the choice and jargon is a bit baffling, any advice would be great!

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

If you sign up to this other company's service do they not supply a router with wi-fi? The obvious thing to do is to find out the specification of the router's wi-fi and get a network card or USB dongle that operates to the same spec.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

if you want the fastest out there then you'll want 802.11ac. Apparently good for 1.3gbits/s - i think i'd need to see that to believe it.

But of coarse, you can only download at the speed of the slowest link (probably the host serving your content).

Marc

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:
I am not an expert. But the important thing is the letter after the 802.11 standard on your router's documentation.

802.11n is what most modern routers use and maxes out at 600 mbps
There is a new thing called 802.11ac which doubles that

2 caveats:

1: your device also needs to support the standard, so a laptop that's 10 years old will be using pre-N standards which are around the 10-50 mbps range. Not much you can do here.

2: real world usage will always be less than the above. "In the sticks" will work well for you as long as you can get the signal through any thick stone walls you might have; on the contrary in London for example, there just isn't the spectrum for wifi to run at anything approaching a reasonable speed (when you do a wifi search in a standard house you'll pick up 25 networks).

Edit: this is all backwards compatible. So if you have an N router and a non-N device, it will work, just slower than it otherwise could do.

In reply to climbwhenready:

I have a brand new Imac which is 802.11ac compatible (according to apples website), but the TVs plus a couple of older ipads plus two iphone 6's...probably not.

Assuming an 802.11ac router would work with all of these other devices?

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

It should do, but depending on the specific router if a device with slow wi-fi is connected at the same time as an 802.11ac compatible device, the router will probably connect to both devices at the speed of the slowest one.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:
Being lazy so I'm sure someone has already said this but the router you get given is free. If signing up with a car insurance company involved a free car it would be no Bentley GT continental but would meet the standard of being a car.

I added better antenna to my virgin router to try and improve it's wireless performance it was slightly better but ultimately the radio architecture and software is limited and the 7 year old router in my garage 50m away provides a better connection than the virgin one next to me!

I'm tempted to try an antenna one of my final year students built and tested as part of my module or ask Virgin for their latest one but ultimately for the performance I want buying a decent one is the answer

Hope that helps.

Toby

In reply to Toby_W:
Thx for the responses. As I am pretty embedded in the Apple garden, the Apple Airport Extreme seems like a good choice for an IT dumbass like myself and appears to get some good reviews (at a price though..twas ever thus with apple .)

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

It's not just the Router but also the Wifi signal strength which is the relative position of everything. I have Virgin cable and tests at 100+ but for TV use a power link which is theoretically slower but more reliable. So you may end up with a mix anyhow. The Virgin router is ac but I only got it as a replacement to the existing N router when I said I would leave and then join!

In reply to m0unt41n:

Was the new Virgin router any better? Obviously I can get that for free and while no doubt faster in straight speed will still be a free box without any go faster stripes.

Be great if it was, save me a few quid

Cheers

Toby

In reply to Toby_W:

Yes for my Xperia tablet and wife's iPad since both do N but my mobile doesn't so it logs onto slower protocol
PC seems quicker as direct connection
So all in all worth it and I still find the limit is due to where you are in the house not the Router unless close to it

I originally looked to get a super duper router thinking that would make everything much better but glad I didn't as it would have been a waste for our house. So I would suggest getting the latest from Virgin and trying that first

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

I recently moved and got virgin. Router seems good. A big issue might have is thick walls in your house which can cause problems regardless of router. You can get boosters pretty cheap though that help in houses like that, plus some careful positioning of the router

In reply to m0unt41n:

Make sure you have the router running on a separate channel to the neighbours. Having the WiFi router sat next to the portable home telephone can be a problem. Turn off the WiFi on devices when you are not using. Think about configuring the router for multiple devices or buy a new one that's optimised for such.

D