New router recommendations

Okay I have gone through two wnr3500L and this dlink dir 655.

Two things I gotta say dir655 is decent connection but the usb feature is some garbage.
Wnr3500L is good range is a little worse than the dir655 and its inconsistant with the dl speed might have defective but had two so i returned both.

Now i convinced my dad to buy another router and to actually spend more.

We are looking at bothh the netgear wndr3700, usb support on the netgear routers can actually access in multiple comps at once. The asus not sure about the usb i hope u can access them without installing a program like the dlink and can access in multiple computers at once. The one I need is 5ghz myself im about 10feet away from router with 1 wall seperating me and the router. My dad is about give or take 30-36feet away 3 walls seperating him. We need a router with usb support that can access in different comps without installing anysoftware and one that he can get appropriate speed and has to be consistant.

 

Both Asus RT-N56U and Netgear WNDR3700 are good. I'm gonna go for Netgear- it turns out it's quite cheap where I live compared to Asus and Linksys.
Both have been reviewed by smallnetbuilder- WNDR3700 v2 and Asus RT-N56U.
Read those two if you haven't done so already.

 

well its exactly the same price where i live 129.99 for both. one thing i see is the netgear has ipv6 support so more future proof. seems like the netgear has more features as well. if the same price would you still go for the wndr3700?

edit: pulling the trigger on wndr3700 tryiing it out my dad wants to move to ipv6 anyways so asus out of the question ill post back anything.

 

just picked it up and installed the basics for now until my dad does his config. So the main reason is for my dad since my comp right now is the only one that has 5ghz since i have intel 6200n i did speednet test and an actual download of a movie.IN his room this is what i got 4 tests each
4-5bars Wirless N
25ms 19DL 3.94UP
34MS 20DL 3.89UP
38MS 19.34DL 3.88UP
46MS 18.54DL 3.76UP
2-3bars 5ghz Wireless N
24MS 16.72DL 3.88UP
24MS 18.31DL 3.89UP
32MS 18.83DL 3.87UP
37ms 20.68DL 3.95UP
now to me the wireless N is better than the 5ghz because of the speed but I decided to download an actual movie of 400mb to see the real life difference.
Wireless N
400mb= 975.6seconds a little over 16minutes
Wireless N 5ghz
400mb= 943.8 seconds almost 16minutes
5ghz even though less bars gives me constant and better speed I saved 30seconds on dl. LoL now I think my dad is going to want to buy him a new usb wireless adapter to get the 5ghz since its desktop might be able to get one with better speed and signal. another thing
I was running these off battery would that matter?(power saver mode)

 

Running the test on battery may or may not affect the score- depends on your Wi-Fi power-management settings (you didn't expect a simple answer, did you? )

As for 5GHz- it's not better or worse compared to 2.4GHz. It has distinct advantages and disadvantages and you have to exploit both in a reasonable way. 5GHz doesn't offer higher throughput than 2.4GHz but since there's far less interference from other wireless devices you may eventually get higher throughput from it. On the other hand it fades with distance and it does it very quickly.
Your current setup allows you to get the best of both worlds- use 2.4GHz for those devices that are far from the router or don't support 5GHz, and 5GHz band for those that are close and require high throughput.

When looking for a Wi-Fi card for your dad remember that you want one with 2Tx2R- meaning using 2x250mbps for both transmit and receive.
If you end up with 1Tx2R you will be able to download @300mbps but upload to the router only @150mbps which means any LAN transfers from your dad's computer will be significantly slower.
You may want to consider Intel 6200 as an internal card instead of USB one too.

 

Good choice with the netgear, I stopped using D-Links a while ago after I encountered multiple hardware problems. Netgear has proved itself, I was surprised how well it help up with 7 computers, 4 phones, and 1 server on the network(this was just a basic router I picked up at best buy). The speeds were still fast and it didn't drop signal or randomly reset.

 

yea the cool thing about the 5ghz the only people using is my sisters mbp and my acer. while the 2.4ghz has my dads desktop, laptop and my sis desktop and of course our printer and 2 iphones.

yea dlink just would cap at 150mbps for some reason it had to be put on Wireless N only to get the 300mbps and the usb was utterly disgusting on it. Im glad this netgear wasnt poop like the other two I had, the range is better on this one.