Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Gadgets, Computers & Software (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadgets-computers-software/)

-   -   On Wi-Fi & Routers (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadgets-computers-software/64258-wi-fi-routers-109.html)

TP Link's AC routers are decent but as I said you get what you pay for. The higher end models give the best performance. As AmitK26 is happy with the TP Link AC750 you may want to give that a thought.

In a nutshell, what I am saying wifi N is passe and you ought to move on to AC. But before doing all this:

a) Make sure your client gadgets also support wifi AC.
b) You have narrowed down to your router as the cause of poor/mediocre network performance

I don't want to get into specific model #s as that will be dictated your budget and use case. You will have to do a bit of research for pricing and performance. Start at one of my favourite sites:
SNBForums Wireless Reviews

Amazon India will provide the pricing. BTW Wifi AD is around the corner in but that's a different story. :D

It is immaterial how long you use, Router is a device which remains on 24X7.

Important points are what is the range you need ? Or how big is the house is it an apartment or house with multiple floors ? How far is your Apple TV is going to be from Router.

My suggestions with certain Assumptions . IF in case you are going to use apple TV and PS3 on same TV screen you can place router also at the same place that will take care of range issue.

In case of dual band router you need to remember that 5 GHZ band has lesser range such that you will observe fall in throughput in next room if there is a wall in between. The make of router does not matter much because that is function of wavelength ( higher frequency shorter WL) .Best is to keep the devices using 5Ghz near to router since mobiles usually fall back to WiFi a/b/g/n so they can work from anywhere in home.
So keeping apple TV in close proximity makes sense. For PS3 you can easily use Ethernet cable because game updates are huge.

So lets say if you are in approx 1500 Sq feet apartment with 2-3BR and have TV , PS3 , an inkjet printer/scanner and couple of laptops and mobiles, an under 2000 rs TPLink router will easily serve your purpose.

Also Since newer apple TV has a Gigabit Ethernet port you can connect cable to one of the port in router if performance is not good and in that case probably your current router will also work :)

You need costlier router if you have any of the following needs.

(1) Running firewall or VPN
(2) Bandwidth reservations / QoS Settings
(3) Running guest accounts
(4) Need more than 4 Ethernet port
(5) You want to do MAC filtering of every device.
(6) Running bit-torrent or any other client on router itself ( Asus provides this functionality)
(7) You want to modify the router using any custom image ( You need router with more RAM)

Though most of these functions are available on consumer routers as well but the performance degrades if you enable all bells and whistles on cheaper routers.

Online reviews too give a decent rating on this, but it is not on a longer run or with intensive usage of the internet. But I presume would go for this or slightly increase the budget and get a Asus/Linksys/Netgear/D-Link

Yes, its placed in the living area and exactly opposite to the router is my gadgets. Approx. 20ft with no obstructions.

5Ghz band will be restricted to the gadgets in the living area alone since that is where the extreme streaming happens, be it Apple TV, Plex or PS3.

Its much lesser, 1100 Sq.Ft and a 2BHK in a perfect squarish construction. Living area in between 2BR.

Problem is, I cant wire connect any of my gadgets since they are separated 20ft apart

I will not use any of these functions/features lol:

I am a recent mover to Tp-Link AC 750. I was in the same position a couple of months back as you.

I used ACT for 6 months with a 40 Mbps pack. I rarely got those speeds on any Wi-Fi devices. I blame it on both the basic router that was provided for free by ACT and also the placement of the router in my house.

Anyway, I was not satisfied with it. Meanwhile, another ISP, Excitel, came up with better plans and I switched to it. Now, as the router had to be bought by myself I started scouring the internet for an AC router which was VFM. Like R2D2, my initial plan was to get the best one in the first go. After, a bit of research I came to the conclusion that its not worth it. Technology is developing very fast. What is best today, is second best in a month.

Considering the above, I went for Tp-Link Ac750 and saved some money. Now, the router is in the same room as my desktop and Smart TV (2 devices which are used for streaming). Mobile devices are alright in majority of rooms but obviously not in the other corner, which I am ok with.

I feel its better to spend 2k on this now and buy whatever is available for another 2k 3-4 years down the line, instead of a brilliant device for 8-9k which will not be the latest 4-5 years later.

Hope you would be aware that none of the Indians receive what was said in the package, I mean when we download stuffs.

But at least you can get the said speed when running a speed test, but in my case it wasn't. This is the main reason for this prolonged discussion.

Very much true when talking about technology and gadgets, newer ones are released quite often making the older ones obsolete.

I am all satisfied when getting the package speed when doing a speed test over wifi. If AC750 can fulfill this, am ok to let go all whimsies and fancies.

Yes, I understand that.

You will surely be better off than on a N router. I am on 50 Mbps and I never get below 40 on speed tests with various websites. My experience of 6 years with Indian Broadband, after the dial-up days of MTNL, says - Buy a router which is one level above what the ISP recommends.

Took the plunge and have ordered the Asus RT-58U AC1300. Awaiting delivery and hope this suffices my purposes now and in the future.

Thanks for each one of you for your timely and valuable advice/suggestions.

Got the router delivered and completed the basic setup.
Mightily impressed with the speeds on laptops and mobile.



Was getting 10mbps from Apple TV and after connecting to 5ghz, it was 90mbps 😃

Anyone know of a good FTTH GPON+WiFi device available here? There are a couple of options overseas.

I want to replace the ONT unit for the fiber internet, and the WiFi router, with just a single unit having both functions.

Just sharing for those who may be facing similar situation.

At office I have two broadband lines - Airtel and BSNL - and two routers. To keep things fast roughly half the devices connect to each of these routers. Now we also have a wireless printer scanner that connects to the Airtel router.

Problem was how to enable people on BSNL router access the wireless printer.

Could not really find any solution posted online. Most of the articles covered bridging but that leads to only one router getting load of internet. Some posts discussed expensive multi line routers.

Any ways solution that I implemented was to get both routers on same subnet. So the Airtel router was given LAN address of 192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0 and BSNL address of 192.168.0.254/255.255.255.0

DHCP range or the dynamic allocation of IP's ranged in different segments. Airtel allocated IP in range 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.99 and BSNL allocated in range 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199

The printer (and perhaps more such devices) was given a fixed IP of 192.168.0.7

And in the router connected to BSNL additionally a fixed route for IP of printer was pointed to IAirtel router IP. That is 192.168.0.7 was pointed to gateway 192.168.0.1

Then I connected one ethernet cable between the two routers.

So now people connected to BSNL router can keep happily printing to the printer connected with Airtel router.

I also experimented with assigning wider subnet and adding same fixed route settings. Airtel was assigned 192.168.0.1/255.255.0.0 and BSNL 192.168.1.1/255.255.0.0. Theoretically it should have worked but it did not.

As I said just sharing for use and comments.

Good for you, though I think it is the cable connecting the routers that did the trick (it merged two physically separated but logically same broadcast domains into one); you don't have to add static routes to IP addresses that fall in the same broadcast domain.

This also should work; but you need on both your routers (a) two IP addresses, and (b) matching static routes. That is, Airtel router must have static route to 192.168.1.0/24 via the BSNL router's IP address in 192.168.0.0/24 subnet and the BSNL router must have static route to 192.168.0.0/24 via the Airtel router's IP address in 192.168.1.0/24.

After a while this sort of setup becomes cumbersome to manage, though.

I have a BSNL simcard with 3G activated. I am using that sim in a Dlink LePetit 'hard' wifi dongle plugged into car USB socket. It works fine in city areas where BSNL 3G is available. But when I travel to rural or remote areas with only 2G connectivity, the dongle fails to work. I presume it works only with any 3G network. Can anyone suggest a good wifi dongle which can work in 2G, 3G & 4G connections .

Typically these have a setting that requires you to choose one of "3G only" or "3G, with fallback to 2G".

Tried Jio too?

I thought Jio does not work on 2G at all. That is why they are cleverly trying to package their JioFi as a 2G to 4G 'conversion' device :D

Jio's network is 4G only. There is no fallback to 3G/2G.

It becomes a problem if you are in areas of weak reception or poor coverage. If the handset or dongle acquires a low quality signal it will stop working till such time signal quality improves.