802.11ac suggestions?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

Parental unit has asked me to upgrade the wifi network. While I suspect the main problem is external slowness of shared neighbourhood cable, it's always possible I might get some real improvement by switching off old 802.11b/g/n mixes on 2.4 GHZ to the newer 802.11ac on 5 MHz and maybe get away from some interference and retransmission issues.

If I'm reading correctly, I want to get the tri-band three antenna router set-up for best throughput, and then connect to it with one to three antenna connectors. I'm assuming any usb plug-ins will only be 'single antenna' setups, but she actually does use a desktop, so I could presumably get her a three antenna pci card. Most of the machines on the network are windows (7ish, I believe), although a couple of linux boxes are around as well.

Anyone have suggestions as to specific routers and adapters? I prefer simple set-up, but I do like routers with built-in customizable firewalls for port forwarding and whatnot.

[hobbit709]

1. you running an actual network or just internet connection?

If a network you might want to upgrade. If you're just using the router to connect to the internet, then ISP speed is the relevant factor. It doesn't matter if you got a 300mbps router when the ISP only gives you 10 mbps.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. A network

and I've got a 'tech worker' business class account with fixed IP, but as always with cable setups, they rate it in 'up to' speeds, and more people in the neighbourhood using cable sucks down that 'up to' speed limit. But I also do store some big files that get moved around internally, and according to wireshark I am getting quite a lot of retransmission errors on the wireless part of things, and switching channels on the 2.4 band isn't helping much.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. Is your cordless phone base anywhere near your router?

Cordless uses 2.4 as well.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. According to the specs, my cordless is a 5.8, not a 2.4. nt

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

5. Are you close enough to get interference form a neighbor? n/t

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. I believe so, which is one reason I'm looking at moving to the 5.0 band from the 2.4. nt

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

7. That may help with the WiFi errors

You might also want to connect via Ethernet to the router and run a speed test from there to compare with your WiFi.

This one looks decent: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704234

[ChromeFoundry]

8. Before you go and dump a bunch of coin on a new access point...

Get a copy of inSSIDer for Home v3 by MetaGeeks, from one of your trusted download sites (v3 is discontinued because they started charging for v4).

It will show you the best channel to put your current AP on and tell you all the interfering radios. both 2.4 and 5 Ghz.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

9. Thanks, and by the results there...

I do need to drop the coin. The 2.4 band is incredibly crowded in my neighbourhood, and the 5.0 band is totally empty.

[ChromeFoundry]

10. Same here.

from my kitchen, I can see 38 unique SSIDs broadcasting in the 2.4 spectrum. The 5Ghz band is wide open except for me.

Just make sure all your devices support, at a minimum, 802.11a/b/g/n or they will never see the 5Ghz band.

Since there are very few devices that support the 802.11ac standards for MIMO, I think purchasing an "ac" access point would be premature. The prices will drop greatly over the next year or two as more devices are manufactured to support the standard. The prices of these radios are largely inflated at this point.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

11. Everything I've got atm is 802.11n

And I'm not entirely sure all of them can be bumped up easily. The desktop with the Asus P5 DHW Deluxe only has USB2.0 not 3.0, so I think I'd have to go with an internal pci-e adapter, and I'm not sure which slots I've got open in it. I'm pretty sure the graphics card is in the pci-e 16 slot, but I don't know if one of the other 2 pci-e slots are open. It looks like I can get the mini version pci-e of the network adapter for the laptop cheaply enough, though.