Which Router for 3x3 MIMO?

For all of us that have PC's integrated with 3x3 MIMO and even 2x2 MIMO, which router is the best for gaming?

 

I don't think 3x3 is available yet, l I believe end of the year is when it's expected.

For gaming, any upper end router should be more than enough as even wireless G is faster than most internet connections. 300meg N (much less 450meg) is only going to benefit you if you share files across a home network.

On the other hand, a faster processor and more ram is always good for lower ping times. The current kings on the market are the Netgear WNDR3700 and Linksys e3000 with the Netgear being favored.

If you are truly concerned with gaming quality, get off wireless and go wired.

 

Thank you for your answer but I know of at least 3 routers which currently uses 3x3 MIMO and many others as well.

The internet connection speed is important but not the most important. The lag is often reduced by a great router compared to a basic one yet they all exceed the internet connection speed.

It comes from the fact that the 3x3 MIMO routers connect to your PC on three different channels therefore reducing the chances that when one channel drops (often for unknown reasons tied to external factors) the two others are still sending data.

Here are the 3 that currently use 3x3 MIMO:

Belkin N1: link

DLink DR650: Link (Rated as the best router ever of all brands)

DLink DGL-4500: Link


None of the ones you mentioned came close compared to those 3 according to CNET reviews.

 

CNET is HEAVILY backed by advertisers, I'm not sure how much I would trust their reviews. Check an independent reveiw site, one of the better is Smallnetbuilder. Most consider the WNDR3700 the king of the hill at the moment.

I find it strange they claim to be 3x3 and yet only manage 300Mbits. 3x3 should allow transfers of 450Mbits, no router goes over 300 currently (It seems they are using one for error checking, not bandwidth). The best routers out there currently are what I previously mentioned, the e3000 and WNDR3700. Both also max out at 300Mbits, same as the ones you mentioned. We have the 3x wireless cards, just not the routers. Nothing on the market currently goes over 300 for home use at least.


As for those routers you mentioned...
I wouldn't trust Belkin long term, I have yet to have anything other than a USB hub from them that lasted.

D-Link in my opinion has actually become worse than them. The DIR-655 you mentioned was the worst router I ever owned. It was fast on transfers, and insanely poor on stability, something that took D-link forever to fix. It was good, when it worked. I switched to what became the e3000 and am very happy with it.


Also, keep in mind that the 655 is single band, meaning you can use 2.4 or 5ghz, but not both at the same time. The 4500 is dual band, Belkin didn't specify. Regardless, they can only reach 300Mbits same as the rest. How anyone can claim a 655 is better than a WNDR3700 (dual radio, fastest throughput) at the moment is beyond me.

 

I'll check out some other reviews but the 3x3 allows a maximum of 450Mbits does not mean that they do. Nonetheless and this is what is VERY important is that you connect to three channels at a time.

I currently have the DIR-655 but thought I could get something much better for gaming. I am myself quite happy with it and set it up in 3x3.

Not sure why you say it's a bad router?

 

First of all you mean spatial streams but refer to them as channels- it's not the same thing.
Secondly you are right that 3x3 allows 450mbps in theory but that requires special hardware- there are only two chips capable of it at present- one from Atheros and one from Ralink- the latter is used by TRENDnet in their TEW-691GR that should be available this week.
Third thing is that the third antenna is not used to transmit but to increase range (which actually doesn't work at all) so it's not very useful feature.

As for your requirements- the only thing that will impact your online gaming is ping which is not even tested with new routers because all of them take less than 1ms. You really don't need bandwidth- maybe a powerful CPU and enough RAM to handle multiple connections.

As for DIR-655 it is a good idea gone bad- it has terrible firmware and a lot of problems that D-LINK can't or don't want to solve. If yours work fine just- be glad but it doesn’t' make it any better.

So to sum it up I agree with leslieann that WNDR3700 is the best thing to go for at the moment but honestly if your D-Link doesn't cause any trouble there's no reason to replace it. Unless it visibly lags reboots or sth like this new router is not gonna make a difference in gaming performance.

 

Well the reason I am looking to change is because the tested ping on the D-Link router is close to 23ms and I know it should be or could be much better.

Maybe I will try the TEW-691GR and see how that works out once it comes out.

 

As I said the effect of the router on ping is less than 1ms. Your ping depends on your connection not the router.
You can test the effect of the router on the latency by disconnecting the router and connecting a network WAN cable straight to a computer- and running the latency test again.

 

If Newsposter comes in and sees this he will complain but whatever... You asked.

My 655...
Keep in mind, I am not the only one with these problems...
Ask Downloads, I was going to run it over in my car I was so angry with it.

First off, we'll start with Shareport... they released the router without Shareport working. Yes, it was sold as a feature that wasn't even working yet apparently. When I got it, it was there, but I still had to update the firmware and download the new program to my computer before it would actually work. This was an improvement over when it first came out.

When it did finally work, the box made it sound like this was a shared drive. As in a cheap networked storage device, which I guess is true. What they didn't say was whoever used it last, had total control and screw you if you wanted to use it. Shared? in the sense that, yes you can trade it back and forth, but, not so shared that you could use it when and where you wanted. Worse, you had to install software to use it. If someone around you used it, you would have to track them down and turn it off on their computer first. Not a big deal as it's a home system really, but do you really want to hunt for who has control?

It was also found that it wouldn't work with a LOT of drives and printers. When it didn't work, it could lock up the router completely. I traced some of the problems to what seemed to be a power issue (the power supply is actually the minimum needed just for the radio). When I mentioned this, some people found using a hub helped or a lower power device suddenly allowed it to work. D-Link ignored it.

While trying to figure that out though, D-Link was busy trying to solve the stability issue. It took months for them to even begin to pinpoint the issue, which was identified by a user. Not them. Finally they started trying to deal with it. The only firmware that worked was the first firmware, which didn't contain Shareport. We knew Shareport wasn't the issue, however D-link since then had released firmware that didn't allow you to backtrack. For months, many, many users measured stability in minutes. They would upload beta firmware and within 5 minutes would get an answer saying it didn't help. This wasn't when the router was 2 months old on the market, this was over a year after it went to market.

Coming up on 2 years, I am told they fixed that issue. They also wiped out a lot of the forum posts regarding it. What you see is less than 20% of how many threads there were asking for help making it simply stable. Daily there was a new thread by someone saying they finally fixed it. Their fix was replacing it. After a while it appeared D-Link flat out gave up on it. At another point there were supposedly offering trade in to older firmware since you couldn't flash back to the older stable stuff.

Another problem, run InSSIDer and watch your signal levels, watch them rise and fall. Keep in mind, many fluctuate, but with a laptop with very high powered antennas 25 feet from my router I could go from 300mbits, down to 2(!) and back again over a period of a minute. Putting a PC power supply to feed it unlimited amps helped, but it only helped. It still varied greatly. Even with this and the most stable firmware, the best I could go was about a week, 2 if I wasn't home much to use it and still I would drop to almost 45Mbits.

Now, one bunk router, I can deal with. bad products happen. Especially when a supplier screws up. Netgear had this happen with bad power bricks. Things happen, I get that. When a software bug is not being fixed, I have problems, it's a man made issue that can be corrected without replacing anything physical.It's not like it needed a power supply or had bad capacitors, it was a bug. We KNEW the 655 could be stable, we just were not allowed to revert to the working firmware. Yes, we even asked D-Link for that ability, just let use revert, nope.


Then we have D-Link in general... I didn't experience these but I saw the fallout.

At one point they simply decided no one needed 802.11B and removed it in order to get faster G and N speeds. They didn't bother telling people, they did it to see how people reacted, if no one complained they intended to leave it that way.

They also removed the bridging ability of the router, this limitation still exists. They claim it was never a listed feature, and it requires work to keep it going, so it was easier to just toss it. Did they tell anyone? Nope, they simply did it, breaking a few peoples networks in the process. Oh, did we mention, you couldn't revert to old firmware? Yeah, tough luck, "try an 825 instead".

They also decided at one point that if you mistyped a URL that you would prefer being re-directed to D-links website. This way they could market you new products and push ads to you. Again, this wasn't mentioned, they just did it. At the time, there was already lawsuits in court over this sort of behavior by ISP's.



On the good side, the 655 is the only D-Link router I have seen in the last few years that lasted more than a year and a half, although, it could have been helped by me not using it that much and when I did, I ran it on an UPS with line filtering. It was also quite fast when it was actually working. It has a great hardware set as evidenced by it's test scores, it's just let down by shoddy firmware. And no, I don't give a damn if they since fixed it, 3 months is too long, almost 2 years is completely unacceptable. When I bought it, it was a high end router and one of the kings of the hill. By the time they got it working, it was a mid level router. Maybe you got a good one, maybe they fixed it, I really, don't care what they did at this point, they failed a long time ago.

 

Looking to get a new router. Now that it's 9 months later, does anyone want to share what they are using and how it's working?

BUMP

 

By asking in this thread are you suggesting you want 450mbps router or just a good router (not necessarily 450mbps one)?

 

If I'm reading my InSSIDer scanner correctly, the Asus RT-N56u allows 450mbps nominal on the 5GHz band.

 

This does not jive with the specs on the chips it uses, at least according to the smallnet review.

ASUS RT-N56U Black Diamond Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-N Router Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

3 antennas do not 3 times the bandwidth make. /yoda

Its only advertised as a 300 as well, if it could do 450 you had better believe the marketing folks would push it. (or they might claim 750 or 900 or some similar marketing BS since it has two radios)

Where are the dang ar9300 APs already?

 

Be that as it may. Just saying.

(Very first entry is the 2.4GHz band. Second entry is the 5GHz band)

 

I would like a 3x3 MIMO router that has simultaneous dual band.

A good one that maybe people have used and I won't have problems with. I have read all sorts of reviews, but I want to know what people personally use and their likes and dislikes.

 

That's not easy because 450mbps routers are new and there are not many users and those who has them can't really say if those routers are rock-solid or not having owned them for such short period of time.

If I had to recommend one I'd go for Linksys E4200 - it's very good and equally expensive. It can do 450mbps on 5GHz band but can't do on 2.4GHz band which was a conscious decision by Linksys- 2.4GHz is simply too crowded for such a thing.

 

Thank you for the info. I was just hoping maybe a few people that have them would chime in. Guess I will wait a bit longer and see what the general consensus is.

 

Meraki's MR24 wireless access point is 3x3 MIMO with three spatial streams. 900 Mbs max throughput.

 

Combined throughput, not max throughput.
Combined means you add max throughput of all radios on board.

"900mbps max throughput" suggests that one user can achieve it which is impossible.
By that rationale Linksys E3000 has 600mbps throughput- have fun explaining to an owner why he can transfer at roughly 100mbps.

 

TP-Link TL-WR1043ND is supposed to work in 3T3R MIMO mode, although it has a maximum throughput of 300Mbps.

 

For example, Intel claims their laptop chip "The Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6300 dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), 3x3 adapter delivers up to 450 Mbps¹ bandwidth". and "up to 450 Mbps of bandwidth is based on the theoretical maximum bandwidth enabled by 3x3 802.11n implementations with 3 spatial streams in combination with a 3 spatial stream access point".

Has anybody got a list of APs the meet that spec? Then a preference?
And does anyone know if older clients in the mix will work, and with or without slowing the faster clients?

 

Netgear WNDR4000 (450mbps only on 5GHz band)
TRENDnet TEW-691GR
D-Link DIR-665 (not a simultaneous dual band router)
Linksys E4200 (450mbps only on 5GHz band)

I would recommend Linksys E4200 for its exceptional range on 2.4GHz band coupled with 450mbps capability on 5GHz band- you get best of both- great range and throughput.

 

And do you know if older clients in the mix will work, and with or without slowing the faster clients?

 

Using mixed mode always affects throughput a bit although older clients would work @2.4GHz band which remains 300mbps on the Linksys while new clients could work on n-only 450mbps band.

As for 450mbps on 2.4GHz band it's technically possible but in reality you would have to live in the middle of a desert to be able to use 450mbps on 2.4GHz band so don't count lack of this capability against Linksys or Netgear.