Internet router upgrade

This weekend I had to get a new internet router due to a bad upgrade of the old one.

The old one was a linksys "G" type wifi router (54g) that is about 6 years old and didn't think an "N" type (300g) would make much difference, boy was I wrong. My old router got 11 - 13 Mbps download speeds, the new one is getting 22 - 25 Mbps and a very noticeable difference at that.

I got the Cisco e2500, which is dual band, allowing 2.4 ghz and 5.0 ghz connections and is compatible with B/G/N type connections. It also has built in guest access, giving guests a private wifi connection keeping them off your internal network.

Still looking at fixing the old one, but after 4 hours I had to call it a loss and it just wasn't going to get it done anytime this week.

Tales like this remind me how much I like my Airport. Glad the new hardware is helping, and 6 years darned well ought to have made a tech difference, wouldn't you think?

I was more afraid the router wouldn't broadcast as far since it doesn't have external antennas. It's actually the second router I picked up, the first was a d-link, which only broadcast about 9db's and was returned, the Cicso is about 25db's. I used an android app, called wifi analyzer, to test out the signals throughout the house and outside.

I've heard a lot of good things about the airport, so would most likely try one if the cisco hadn't worked out.

Thanks for the heads up there Darren. Now it makes sense why the D Link stuff is always so much cheaper. Guess we get what we pay for. I got new internet provider and now have blazing speeds. 3 times what i was dealing with before. Only the upload side is the same at 600K kinda dont want upload traffic.


Other thing with wifi routers that we all forget. When we have 3 or so people in the house with a few computers and smart phones on wifi each device on the wifi network divides the bandwidth further and further. So you take the 12 Mbps or so the old router had and divide that up and the individual machines link gets pretty slow compared to a hard wired ethernet connection.

I actually used that fact to limit my boys and their internet downloading etc by having them on wifi but having Linda and my own computer hardwired.

Rob Keeble said:

I actually used that fact to limit my boys and their internet downloading etc by having them on wifi but having Linda and my own computer hardwired.

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The new one has QOS (Quality Of Service) options to give certain MAC addresses priority, even if they are wireless. If you have an older router, you may be able to load a third party firmware such as DD-WRT to allow these options on older devices. Be careful and follow instructions though or you may end up with a "bricked" router like I did. I missed a step in the install and now need to do so further steps to get the router going again.