802.11ac WiFi Router Round-Up Tests Broadcom XStream Platform Performance (hothardware.com) 77
MojoKid writes: Wireless routers are going through somewhat of a renaissance right now, thanks to the arrival of the 802.11ac standard that is "three times as fast as wireless-N" and the proliferation of Internet-connected devices in our homes and pockets. AC is backward compatible with all previous standards, and whereas 802.11n was only able to pump out 450Mb/s of total bandwidth, 802.11ac is capable of transmitting at up to 1,300Mbps on a 5GHz channel. AC capability is only available on the 5GHz channel, which has fewer devices on it than a typical 2.4GHz channel. The trade-off is that 5GHz signals typically don't travel as far as those on the 2.4GHz channel.
However, 802.11ac makes up for it with a technology named Beamforming, which allows it to figure out where devices are located and amplify the signal in their direction instead of just broadcasting in all directions like 802.11n. Also, while 802.11n supports only four streams of data, 802.11ac supports up to eight streams on channels that are twice as wide. HotHardware's AC Router round-up takes a look at four flagship AC routers from ASUS, TRENDnet, D-Link and Netgear. All are AC3200 routers that use the new Broadcom XStream 5G platform. Netgear's Nighthawk X6 tends to offer the best balance of performance in various use cases. However, all models performed similarly, with subtle variances in design, features and pricing left to differentiate them from one another.
However, 802.11ac makes up for it with a technology named Beamforming, which allows it to figure out where devices are located and amplify the signal in their direction instead of just broadcasting in all directions like 802.11n. Also, while 802.11n supports only four streams of data, 802.11ac supports up to eight streams on channels that are twice as wide. HotHardware's AC Router round-up takes a look at four flagship AC routers from ASUS, TRENDnet, D-Link and Netgear. All are AC3200 routers that use the new Broadcom XStream 5G platform. Netgear's Nighthawk X6 tends to offer the best balance of performance in various use cases. However, all models performed similarly, with subtle variances in design, features and pricing left to differentiate them from one another.
Buy APs, not Wireless Routers (Score:4, Interesting)
Wireless routers are a security disaster. Public interface combined with the front door and back door to your network.
Get access points. They don't run out of memory because they aren't doing all that routing and firewall stuff.
Have a separate router.
Don't mix to two. Just don't.
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It is trivial to turn off the routing functionality, effectively configuring the router into AP.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com... [smallnetbuilder.com]
Re:Buy APs, not Wireless Routers (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but why should I pay for all that routing functionality when I will turn it off anyway?
You don't have any other alternatives, at least when we're talking about home-network class hardware. The market for plain ACs is so thin, that it's much easier and cheaper to actually buy a wireless router.
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Plus almost all of them are running embedded linux of some sort so its trivial for the manufacturer to add routing capabilities as most consumers see it as a necessary feature. It would cost them far more in returns and sales for dumb consumers buying an AP thinking it's also a router if it was marketed towards consumers.
Re:Buy APs, not Wireless Routers (Score:4, Informative)
The Ubiquiti UAP Access Points I would consider home-network through to enterprise class. A three pack is cheaper than all but the Trendnet router. Coupled with a Security Gateway and you have a bloody easy setup that is fairly price competitive and easy to maintain.
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/uni... [ubnt.com]
I guess my feeling of what home-network class may be out of the norm but I found the ubiquity gear easier to setup and configure than the Fritzbox given to me by my ISP.
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Not MU-MIMO, only MIMO. Big difference. Sub 900Mb is pretty slow.
Not an equal comparison (Score:2)
All of the routers tested in TFA are rated for 600Mb/s @2.4GHz and 1,300Mb/s @ 5GHz. The UniFi AC Lite AP that you link to is rated at 300Mb/s @2.4GHz and 867Mb/s @ 5GHz, so no surprise they're a lot cheaper.
The Ubiquiti UniFi products also require management software to be installed on some local computer, they don't provide a built-in web interface like most home networking devices. Whether this makes them "easier to configure" is a matter of personal preference I suppose.
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I ran that software once to configure it. If you need it again, you can reinstall it. There's not much configuration for an AP beyond SSIDs, passwords, security requirements and some wacky 11e settings if you're on drugs.
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Yup. That's what I use. Ubiquiti is pretty good gear and they make the right product. Not Frankenstein combo wifi, router, cable modem, kitchen sink boxes.
Ideal for our 3 story house with a business downstairs. It does a good job of separating the open wifi from the closed wifi on the internal network.
Re:Buy APs, not Wireless Routers (Score:4, Informative)
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Just don't use the routing? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seemed like there was a time when pure access points got strangely expensive and "routers" were cheap.
So I just bought a router and used one of the LAN ports as its uplink, avoiding the "WAN" port and all the routing functionality together. I already have a firewall/router elsewhere.
The only downside I've seen of doing this is some of the devices I've used seem to have some of their ancillary functionality, like NTP, hardcoded to only use the WAN port for outgoing traffic.
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The Asus routers have a nice "AP mode" where NAT/DHCP gets turned off and NTP, updates etc just keep working. Contrast that with the latest Linksys models that reset their config if they can't access the internet through the WAN port to manage it's "cloud based management".
These days I use nothing but Asus for myself and I advise customers to avoid Linksys..
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I like the Ubiquiti APs with PoE. So less clutter.
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I'm talking about the security issues of all-in-one wireless routers.
OTS routers are bad enough. OTS routers with WiFi built in are a worst case scenario.
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Another issue that I realized is that I have a better chance of a home wireless router letting me install OpenWRT than an AP. One of the eventual changes to OpenWRT is per device wifi queues. Wifi is only fast because it supports batching, but the network stacks are so dumb that they only batch when there are 2 or more packets in a row destined for the same dev
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I'm not sure I follow. Most home "routers" also have wifi capabilities. They allow you to connect to your ISPs modem, connect several LAN computers to the modem, as well as connect WiFi devices.
How would your setup work? Do you have a LAN router that connects to the WAN modem, and then a separate AP for Wifi devices? That seems expensive, and not easy to maintain.
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I'm not sure I follow. Most home "routers" also have wifi capabilities. They allow you to connect to your ISPs modem, connect several LAN computers to the modem, as well as connect WiFi devices.
How would your setup work? Do you have a LAN router that connects to the WAN modem, and then a separate AP for Wifi devices? That seems expensive, and not easy to maintain.
That is exactly how WiFi was designed from day 1. As APs connected to a LAN.
WiFi Routers came later.
Re:Apple Airport? (Score:4, Informative)
No mention of Apple products. Apple has been using 802.11ac for years. I have one of their wifi routers: easy to use, just works, etc. and it has 802.11ac.
That's because it's really a Broadcom Xstream Chipset Router Roundup, not an 802.11ac Router Roundup. I wanted to see how they compared to my Draytek, but all they've reviewed is multiple tweaks of the same reference design from Broadcom. They even say they're reviewing "top-shelf units" (first time I've heard D-Link and Trendnet described as top-shelf), but then totally omit what I'd consider actual top-shelf units, maybe an Aironet 3600, a Draytek 2860, and an Airport Extreme.
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Actually they've been making some of the best SOHO routers since the original Airport Extreme. I'm not sure where they bought their wlan talent but Apple can take the same merchant chips and make a superior device out of it and they tend to support them longer than pure networking companies. The one downside is they tend to be on the expensive side vs other solutions unless you buy them right after a refresh where they are generally competitive.
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top self refers to a bar where the best liquor is kept on the top self
Re:"up to 1,300Mbps" (Score:5, Insightful)
The 1300Mbps is a scam figure because it's industry convention to report the layer 2 data transfer rate, but at that layer there is a lot of chatter dealing specifically with the physical link quality, which can be substantial with wireless. So indeed, in most cases you can take the number, then divide by two. That's the TCP/UDP data rate you will see in the best case scenario.
Moreover, 1300Mbps is the figure for the three-stream capable devices. But what's the percent of clients with three stream wireless adapters? About less than 5%?
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It only would have MU-MIMO enabled devices, and they started hitting the market only this summer. So if you have three single stream AC clients and an AC17500/AC1900 three stream access point, then they all could talk it at once. However, there is still an issue with MU-MIMO, because MU-MIMO allows simultaneous clients only for uploads to the router. It won't help in situations one MU-MIMO client transferring files to another MU-MIMO client connected to the same radio on a AC.
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It won't help in situations one MU-MIMO client transferring files to another MU-MIMO client connected to the same radio on a AC.
Actually MU-MIMO requires beam forming which means it does help as long as the clients are separated by enough angular space for the beam forming to happen.
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>industry convention to report the layer 2
you wish, usually they report layer 1 speed, remember how g was supposed to be 54 Mbit/s? but in reality it topped off at 20Mbit :)
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All I really care about is that, for the first time, I can actually use wireless reliably. I have a link in my apartment where the wireless router is in the next room to my bedroom. I struggled to get decent speeds for even youtube but since upgrading my wireless router to 802.11ac, I've managed to stream 1080p movies off my NAS.
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Up until the point that all of your neighbors upgrade to AC with 80 MHz or 160 MHz channels on 5Ghz and suddenly your back to the same crowded, interference burdened system you see on 2.4GHz. It's ridiculous that these units will be sold, configured out of the box for maximum speed, chewing up spectrum, to connect to a 10Mbs Internet connection.
There are many more 5 ghz channels than 2.4 ghz and the range is much shorter so there will actually be fewer neighbors to contend with so the situation should never get anywhere near as bad as it is now on 2.4 ghz. On top of that things like, cheap wireless phones and baby monitors are not on the 5ghz range so I doubt the situation will ever end up as bad.
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Well, that shouldn't be an issue for 802.11ac or 802.11n. But like I mentioned in an other post, any AC router rated faster than AC1750 or AC1900 is overkill. You can make an argument that the two-stream AC1200 will suffice for 90% of households, since less than 5% or so of people have three stream capable wireless adapters.
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The "divide by 2" rule has never been that accurate. Back in late B spec/early G spec days when I first heard this rule, actual throughput was usually 40-45% of the link rate. N spec improved coding efficiency greatly and is around 60-65% as well as AC spec.
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Re:They all have weakness (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenWRT? (Score:2)
So which ones are well-supported (actually functional and stable) by OpenWRT? The bandwidth will be nice, but dealing with factory firmware isn't worth it.
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The ASUS router ships with a custom version of DD-WRT, and you can always put the stock version on there. Not sure about OpenWRT support though.
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Actually the Asus router comes with their own firmware called AsusWRT, which is licensed under GPL. There's at least one hobbyist derivative by the name AsusWRT Merlin. Asus has been known to cooperate with Merlin by providing them with beta versions and by pulling patches into their mainline firmware. Third party firmwares such as Tomato or DD-WRT can also be installed. The factory firmware isn't too bad as of now, but if you're the kind that likes to mod routers, Asus is a pretty good choice
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Ah OK, I thought AsusWRT was DD-WRT-derived. My mistake. Anyway, when I was researching routers I chose the ASUS RT-AC68U based on it being amicable to flashing with other firmware. The out of the box stuff is pretty good though, and so far I haven't felt the need to tinker with it yet.
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TFA answers that question for DD-WRT:
Trendnet router fared in our wireless testing. It's also the only router in this test to openly support the DD-WRT open source firmware (though builds are available for all of the others), which could seal the deal for many folks reading this. The other routers here do have support from the DD-WRT communnity as well, though they don't "officially" support it.
One would think OpenWRT would be similar, but it does not appear to be so as none of them show up in the list o
Why? (Score:2)
802.11b is comfortably faster than our "Borat_band".
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I guess your cable company hasn't upgraded to DOCSIS 3 yet? Because even first generation head ends running in 4x4 mode support 152/108, the new DOCSIS 3.1 spec supports speeds in the ten gigabit per second range. The few markets served by FTTH can also get 10Gbps speeds through 10G-PON, it's just sad that it's not available nationwide since we paid AT&T 10's of billions to build that next generation network.
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And this matters *why*? (Score:2)
Hell, I even use a pretty kickass home media server, and streaming a 1080p Blu-Ray rip only sucks down around 20-30MBps on average (peaks at 54, IIRC). 802.11n can handle 5-10 of those simultaneously without breaking a sweat.
I don't mean to sound like "640k should be enough for anyone" - I love new toys - But we need to address the bigger problem with getting the bits to our door before we
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Backups over WiFi that are bottlenecked by my NAS disk write speed are worth the investment in 802.11ac.
Downloading from the net at the same time and simultaneously watching a HD movie streaming to my TV without hitting WiFi bandwidth constraints is something I don't even think about.
It's good, I benefit from it supporting way higher throughput than my WAN connection and it's also nice knowing it supports the full 160Mbps I get over WAN too.
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I guess your cable company hasn't upgraded to DOCSIS 3 yet? Because even first generation head ends running in 4x4 mode support 152/108, the new DOCSIS 3.1 spec supports speeds in the ten gigabit per second range.
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But we need to address the bigger problem with getting the bits to our door before we worry about how fast the bits actually move around inside our houses.
1. I've been using the Xbox One streaming to my laptop, which will now work in 1080p, but getting it to work on my 802.11n has been problematic. Plugging into my 1g wired connection solves it.
2. While, in theory, 802.11n should allow HD streaming between devices on my WLAN, the issue is that I'm in a moderate density area (1/4 acre lots. Not an apartment, but not in the woods), and I can see around 10-20 SSIDs nearby. The more everyone switches to 802.11ac, the less time each access point will be using a ch
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A WRT54G can't keep up with a 50Mbps connection. Oh it'll come fairly close, meaning it can handle anything less than that, but it won't reach 50Mbps. Now a N model, sure, it can keep up.
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Antenna is more important than radio (Score:2)