Gaming Router

I am most sorry - I have done nothing so far on this website but ask questions. I have and am delighted with a gaming laptop, but rather crippled on steam by an appalling Scottish Highlands broadband speed -- 200 kilobytes per second. I wondered if this is as mother's router is several years old, and have heard of both gaming routers and router-modems.

Are these devices such that they would plug into the laptop by USB and hopefully detect faster broadband, or need they be fastened to a telephone port?

 

First of all there is no such thing as a gaming router - packets are packets. Adding "gaming" to something like router serves one purpose only - to jack up the price.

Secondly if you have a slow connection no amount of money spent on networking hardware is going to help. There is no "faster broadband" to be detected - you have a slow connection and that's it.

It seems like your only option is to look for another ISP.

 

You need a new ISP (internet service provider).

You can't buy equipment to solve this. You could have the best networking gear in your house. But if your internet connection out of your house to the rest of the world is slow, then your internet experience will be slow. And the only way to fix that is to get a new ISP.

 

THIS ^

If you really have to get a new one, get something from Ubiquity Or Routerboard HAP series.

I have been using this one - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BMMK4HI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

for about 6 months now, performs way better than my ASUS RT68U.

 

Maybe 5GHz band will ensure lowest latency since not many devices comes with dual bands.
Yes I agree you need to find new ISP, DSL or Optic Fiber is/are the best option with speeds greater than or equal to 10Mbps.

 

First step would be checking with your ISP on the package you guys have and the speed you should be getting. Then you can go from there to determine if its on the front end or back end.

 

Way better in what terms? I understand folks are mostly happy with the RT68U, although it isn't considered sth special these days.

 

I'm really curious what you had in mind, if you have time to comment, because I should get myself a new router these days. Range (tx power / rx sensitivity), reliability, throughput, performance with many clients, ????

I understand the hAP AC is based on Qualcomm while the AC68U on Broadcom radios. That RouterOS is extremely flexible for experts but a puzzle to newcomers like myself (found when configuring a cAP lite). That it gets by fine for the basics despite the weaker CPU/RAM specs, and is great for making networks with several routers. But that the throughputs aren't the highest, and may go down if turning on some features that need the CPU like VPN.
While the AC68U or AC86U should be able to produce higher local throughputs due to the newer generations of the radio standards and faster CPUs, for homes where a single device is enough, but are not as great for larger networks.

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...86u-dual-band-ac2900-wireless-router-reviewed

 

Connection stability, no drop outs, better range without the need for antennas, better settings, no need to restart the router every week etc.

From my experience, Qualcomm radios have better compatibility and less connection issues with both Intel based and Broadcom / Qualcomm based Wifi adapters/cards. Every single Boardcomm based router, only seems to like working properly with select devices. In my and my friends cases, all of ASUS routers are picky between Apple / Android devices (they would work properly with 1 or the other properly , at a time) AND Intel / Killer (broadcomm?) based Wifi adapters in routers. For example, my AW has a Killer 1535 and has serious connection issues with ASUS routers, doesnt matter what specs. But works perfectly with Intel 8265/8260 Wifi cards.
Specs will definitely come into play if you intend to actually use a lot of hardware intensive services. (like router based VPN ) But not many people in the $100 bracket actually do that.
Also when people buy these $200+ routes, they think that these routers will magically make there signal and internet better, which is almost never the case.

Also the routerboard devices are much more easier to setup in a multi access point home , than any ASUS / Netgear router i have tried, unless of course you flash DDWRT / Tomato on them.


*Apologies for the super late reply, for some reason i never got a notification that you quoted me here.

 

D-Link DIR-883

Tnx for sharing the experience.

I've noticed Netgear R7800 has the Qualcomm QCA9984 (4x4 MU-MIMO radio, even supporting 160MHz channels) which is relatively well regarded at SNB:
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...x4s-smart-wifi-gaming-router-reviewed?start=3
Actually the opinion over there is that MU-MIMO is still predominantly marketing vapourware and that this radio is almost the only one showing some advantage from it in some conditions, while generally one is much more likely to experience performance deterioration
The same radio is found in some other boxes like Zyxel NBG6817, Fritz!box 7590, 7580, Synology RT2600ac, D-Link DIR-883, TP-Link TL-WTR8600...

Though actually I'm not sure if I really need this sort of specs, might be a GAS victim. My actual requirements are
- decent overall performance and stability;
- good 2.4MHz range to cover the back rooms a little bit better;
- home VPN;
- and parental controls with useful time restrictions.
In this view, one suggestion was the Fritz!box 4040, based on 1-year old Qualcomm SoC IPQ4018 (2x2 radios plus a four-core 638MHz CPU in a small and sparsely packaged box wth no huge heatsinks inside), supposedly with quite stable and user friendly stock firmware (also supported by LEDE), even well regarded by some gamers
https://www.techtesters.eu/avm-fritzbox-4040-review/
https://www.pcwelt.de/produkte/AVM-Fritzbox-4040-WLAN-Router-Test-10059408.html

The hap ac remains high on my list, but I'm afraid I's waste too much time configuring parental access schedules and overriding them when needed because this is not in Quickset ;(

And regarding the range I'm getting the impression that the 2.4GHz reach of all new devices is relatively low mainly because of adhering to the EU tx power restriction... which is easily bypassed with Mikrotik and other pro gear or custom firmwares. I assume external antennas on consumer routers fall into the same (neighbour-unfriendly) category?
https://frixtender.de/kompatibilitaet-der-fritzbox-4040/

 

There is an issue here. Assuming you can increase the range of your router by increasing transmit power, you would have to increase the transition power of a client as well, otherwise the whole setup isn't going to work. The fact that data from the router/AP can reach the client isn't very useful if the request for data from the client can't reach the router/AP.

You can't increase transmit power od typical Wi-Fi cards in notebooks though.

You can get around it by implementing antennas that have better gain, but the more gain the antenna has the more directional it is, so ultimately you might be improving range, but you will be making the coverage worse at the same time.

 

Certainly most clients can't be adjusted.
The Mikrotik way with internal antennas I assume is via more tx power and also better rx sensitivity. They list them for their hardware. I've already tested with their cAP lite, signal almost exactly the same as my ISP's box, but hAP ac has about 6dB more listed in both.
Regarding consumer routers, i guess some can be adjusted to higher tx power, because the same are sold to different markets, though they likely don't support the same 1W peak power. And this doesn't affect their (undisclosed) rx sensitivity.
A higher-gain antenna I assume should work in both directions, but indeed result in more directional coverage, like further on the same floor but less up and down, assuming vertical antennas. I don't need to cover multiple floors with this one, just need to improve the coverage a little bit. In my other house I set that cAP lite to the second floor.

 

Sorry for pasting a bad reference. These blokes put 3 external antennas on a dual-band 2x2 which seems to have 4 internal antennas, two for each band. On closer look, they connected the pigtails to measurement points (hence the special connectors), without cutting off the internal antennas.

 

Hey Bloodhawk,

If you are having current issues with your 1535 and an Asus router, would you mind reaching out to us directly at http://www.killernetworking.com/about/contact so that we can help you figure it out, or get the details so that we can duplicate the issue in our QA lab? We haven't noted any issues with our adapters and Asus routers. Also, by the way, the 1535 is a Qualcomm-based radio.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

Thanks for reaching out Anthony and for the correction on the radio being used as well! I knew i was missing something.

For now all my laptops have the Intel 8260/8265 in them. Ill reach out to you guys once i have the chance to swap in the 1535.

 

Sounds good. We always appreciate when users are willing to help us troubleshoot device connectivity issues, especially ones that we didn't know about!

 

I second this completely. I don't have much personal experience with Mikrotik, but have heard good things. Have been using Ubiquiti's Unifi series extensively for awhile, and have found it be an excellent solution for most solutions from high end residential and up.

Thanks for taking the time to respond here. Great to know you're willing to help out when we have an issue.
Just to make you aware, a user has been reporting some major issues with a Unifi system and Killer Wireless 1535 equipped Dell 9560s. It appears to be an issue on the Unifi side which will be resolved shortly in firmware, but in case you wanted to follow-up or reach out you can see more here: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi...ess-1535-reboots-UAP-Pros/m-p/2153930#M264729

 

I think you're right on here. Any router manufacturer or user who claims to increase range significantly though power increases doesn't understand wireless. Agree completely that if you're looking for a small increase in coverage a model with higher gain antennas can be a good idea. And for high density areas, significant gaps, or throughput increases, your almost always better off trying to get another AP in the area.

 

Thank you very much for pointing that thread out to me. I have forwarded it to our QA head so that he can handle it as he sees fit.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

Simply physically moving some things around, even if it's by inches, to dodge line of sight between client and access point can make the biggest difference of all.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

Was there any changes in newer Killer drivers suite from v1.5 and above?
I noticed some tweaks are already present even after driver uninstall. For example, Roaming aggressiveness was set to Lowest and I also set freq. band preference to 5GHz. Another entry in services.msc was Qualcomm WLAN driver service. What does this service do?

 

Yes, there are changes with drivers. The Qualcomm WLAN Driver service has been added to support Windows 10 RS3 (Fall Creators Update) and above, as Microsoft is requiring software installs be done via WU/INF instead of co-installer packages – this is just preparation for that. This was previously installed via the Qualcomm Atheros WLAN installers, but was never present with Killer as we did not bring it in.

As for the other tweaks, I’m not sure why these would have been set. We looked at multiple machines loaded with the latest driver packages, and Roaming aggressiveness is set to 3.Medium, and Preferred Band is 1 – No Preference. Something else must have altered registry or someone/something else changed these settings previously. If changes were made prior, they would've been retained when you updated or uninstalled and reinstalled.

 

Ohh that means the driver isn't uninstalled as clean as possible. I think it still leaves some things in registry.
Any clean uninstall tool from Killer to give Clean install like experience?

 

Sorry again for inexact info :blush:
The Murata SWG connector includes a switch which disconnects the antenna when the probe is inserted.
https://wenku.baidu.com/view/fab09d781711cc7931b716a2.html
These blokes actually have a good price for the SWG probe pigtails, which are generally quite expensive. Though, replacing the connector with a standard antenna connector should be much more cost-effective with resoldering gear at hand.

 

No, we do not currently have a tool that does a "clean install" type of experience. The driver is completely uninstalled when you uninstall it from Device Manager. If you merely ran the installer for the new package, the previous driver was not uninstalled at all, and still there, available for roll back. If you did uninstall the previous driver, the settings for the hardware device are retained because Windows has a default driver for the device in its driver store.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

Upon installing the new driver the settings must revert to default, correct? Is it a bug?

 

I don't believe so. We consider it normal operation. If it did not work that way, then all of the people who have Wireless-N access points that only work properly when their Wi-Fi adapter is set to Wireless-N max would probably be furious.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

Now that feature is good. Once tweaked it will stay until a Clean OS install. Thank you.