Fast(er) home WiFi

Hi,

I'm looking on some advice of how to make my home wifi a bit faster. Here's what I have: WRT54GL router, a desktop computer that I use as a home server with 100Mbps network card, a laptop with 1Gbit network card (two of them are connected in a wired LAN) and another laptop with Intel 5300 AGN wifi card (this laptop is always connected through WiFi) which claims to be able to go up to 450Mbps.

The wireless connection is 54Mbps in theory but I get about 1.5-2MB/s transfer rates in practice. So, two questions:

1. Is it possible to bump this speed up closer to theoretical 54Mbps (~6.75MB/s)?

2. If not, would buying another router help out? I'd be happy if I could get closer to the range of 100Mbps that I get with wired connection. Let's say max WiFi speed that can be achieved would be top priority. I'm also pretty close to the router and don't have that much interference (there's 2 other WiFi networks nearby).

Thanks.

 

The first question is how fast is your internet connection and what do you do with your home network?

In general terms, it makes little sense to spend significant money or time to make a 'home network' faster than your internet hookup.

 

Turn off antivirus turn off firewalls turn off wifi encryption .. you get closer to max speed but it doesn't worth it.

Buy new router and new cards for desktops and usb adapters for older notebooks.
Or wired or powerline networking.

ps.:

Or if you would read his full post ... he wants it faster because using home server .. guessing movies/mp3 storage and acces at any pc.

 

1. 2.5MB/s (20-22mbps) is the best real life speed 802.22g gets and that is with perfect signal quality. It's absolutely impossible to get nowhere near 54mbps just like it's impossible to get near 300mbps on 802.11n.

2 The only option you have is to upgrade to 802.11n- 300mbps one.
There are only few 450mbps routers and these are expensive, there is also N Lite which is 150mbps- which is useless. My recommendation- buy a Netgear WNR3500L for some $70.
I've written about this router extensively in other posts so I won't elaborate on it again here.

Note: Intel 5300 is capable of 450mbps provided it has 4 antennas and 450mbps router so you can probably ignore it for the time being.

 

Thanks for the replies! That was very helpful.

Yeah it's basically home server, sharing videos/music across computer + I use it to daily synchronize my documents, using SyncToy. I really can't afford to loose this stuff so I keep 2 backups (on a desktop and on another laptop).

It's basically the speed in the local LAN I want to maximize. My internet connection is 100Mbps download/1Mbps upload, so that speed is fine. I know good routers are really expensive, but I was thinking something along the cheaper lines of what downloads suggested. I look into his earlier posts.


Also, is there any advantage to flash these routers with open source firmware? Any gains in speed/stability and such?
EDIT: Found one answer from downloads here.

 

I will second the Netgear recommendation. I think I have the 3700, which is also very good, but a bit higher in cost. I have a 5300 that connects to it "at 300" which of course it isn't really doing. But it does perform fully up to the speed of my 35mb internet pipe, so that's all I'm concerned with.

And no need to flash Netgear with other firmware imo, but I'm sure opinions on that will vary.

 

Great, thanks. I am asking about the firmware, as I read the reviews on Newegg everyone is mentioning those, but no one mentions why or problems with the manufacturer's firmware. (Actually, I bet >50% of them has no clue of the advantages of one firmware vs then other.) The stock firmware I have on WRT54GL has way more than I can think of - basically the only things I need are: option to choose which frequency channel to use, WiFi security setup and be able to do port forwarding. I'm guessing every router today has those.

FXi, what are the typical (or max?) speeds you're getting with your Netgear router?

 

Default Netger firmware is rather good- it's faster than DD-WRT (and on par with Tomato). DD-WRT is easier to manage than Tomato (more user friendly- at least in my opinion) while DD-WRT is also significantly slower than default Netgear or Tomato while offering more features.
All in all it's good to have an option to go for one of those but it doesn't mean you have to flash right away. You should flash only when you have a specific requirement or a problem that 3rd party firmware can fulfill/solve.

 

"desktop computer that I use as a home server" implies nothing about what he's serving up.......

 

unreal25,

I'm wondering similar and contemplating taking the following route as I have similar infrastructure currently: ~$150 investment of "N" router w/1Gbit wired ports and 1GBit NIC for the home server ...

Rob

 

Eh yeah me too. I think the advice here is good, I will definitely be going for N router and 1GBit NIC. The NICE I got on mine (server) is also the choke point as it is 100Mbit. (I use my old small Dell Inspiron desktop as a server and works quite nicely)

I just have other things I wanted to buy first (a lens for my camera which will be ~$700, then I bough a new hard drive for $70), so I am trying to be careful with spending.

 

Hopefully you'll find a good deal on the "N" router w/gigabit ports. At least you mentioned that your two wired lappies have gigabit RJ45 so you may be able to score something for under $100 combined.

You may already know this site but I get good benchmarks from here Real Help For Your Small Network - SmallNetBuilder. I tend not to rely too much on theoretical and weigh real-world-speeds more but I believe you were right-on about part of your bottleneck being the server NIC (assuming the other components of your server can saturate the channel w/o difficulties). Envious that your broadband is at 100Mbps down

Good luck!
Rob

 

I should be more precise - the *internet* speed is 10Mbps/1Mbps (crappy Time Warner cable), which is fine bandwidth-wise for me. Unless I am at uni, where I can enjoy 80Mbps/30Mbps speeds. But the max *LAN* speed is 100Mbps, which I wanted to make faster as I am transferring ~100MB-1GB of data daily.

Yeah I've been looking at that site too, but I think I will go with downloads' suggestion as far as the router is concerned. Now I just need to find someone to get rid of the WRT54GL.

 

Setup your old router as a AP for your slower clients.

 

I'm looking for much the same thing, and I think I've settled on the WND3500L. I don't want to lose performance, but I do need static IP assignment via DHCP. Does the stock WND3500L firmware do that? Or will Tomato? I'm currently using DNSMasq as my DHCP server to do that.

 

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly but if you want reserved IPs assigned by MAC address to certain computers while DHCP is still on- it's possible on 3500L's default firmware.

 

That's exactly what I was asking Thanks. I'll have one on the way shortly... heh

 

If you're looking at getting a new wireless router, keep an eye out for a dual-band system. They allow it for most modern wireless spectrum (B/G/N) to be able to communicate with the router without having any interference and degradation problems.