Maximum PC

So I have a Verizon FiOS issued wireless G router (UltraLine Series 3 Model 9100EM). The range on this router is terrible when I'm anything more than 10 ft. away from the router. What new wireless router do you guys suggest? I will probably go the wireless N route, but unsure if I need dual band or not. I mainly use my wireless in the house anywhere from 20-45 ft away from the physical router. I stream quite a bit of stuff on my laptop and computer so getting a strong signal with good speeds is deal.

ps - my internet is 35/35 speeds and I wasn't getting more than 1-5mbps DL speeds when I ran speedtests. The house I'm in is an older home built in the '60's but I don't know of any interference issues other than cordless phone and microwave that would get in the way.

Thanks for any suggestions guys.

I recently got the Netgear WNDR3700 (Maximum PC best of the best router) as a replacement for my trusty Linksys WRT54G. It is sitting on my desk in a corner. I have a 150Mbps Asus 802.11n USB dongle which I use on my HTPC with a USB extension cable so it sits about chest high, and it negotiates a 144Mbps link there, through 3 interior walls. I only have 10Mbps Internet service, but I can get full speed over the wifi with speedtest.net using the 2.4GHz dongle. For uber-maximum speed, you could go for one that does the 5GHz band, but I've heard that comes with a serious degradation of range. We use Netflix HD and Hulu and Amazon VOD HD fine with the 2.4GHz setup.

I also have a PCI 802.11g adapter in my wife's desktop PC in our bedroom (another 3 or 4 interior walls, diagonally around a corner) serviced by the Netgear, and it performs well there also.

Something I highly recommend is put Netstumbler (or similar) on your laptop, and wander around to the edges of your house, and jot down the channels that your neighbors are using. If they are all on 6, go to 1 or 11. If there are some on 1, 6, and 11, try 3, 4, 8 or 9, depending on which is the strongest neighbor in the area where you use wifi the most. (I.e. if you have a strong neighbor on 1 and 6, but a weaker neighbor on 11, try channel 9.) I'm not sure how much this helps, but I always do that when I move into a new space, and I've had good luck with reception. When we moved into our house I finally started noticing weaker reception in our bedroom, but that was solved by upgrading to the WNDR3700.

Netstumbler can be a good quick tool to see what APs and channels are in use. But for the love of god ignore the rest of his advice. In the 2.4GHz band only use channels 1, 6, or 11. If your neighbors are on 1 and 6 strong, but a weak neighbor is on 11, then you use 11. If you go to channel 9 as he suggests you will get interference from both channels 6 and 11. Same holds true if you pick something between 1 and 6, then you will get interference from those two channels.

If you want to future proof your AP then dual band is a good way to go. Then you will have both 5GHz and 2.4GHz. But if nothing you own does 5GHz then you might want to save yourself some money... I would buy dual. Also if you get a new AP and you have lots of neighbors running you might get better performance turning the channels from 40MHz wide to 20MHz wide. Short answer is the 40MHz 2.4GHz channel takes up the 1-11 spectrum. This problem isn't in 5GHz as they made the channels 40MHz wide.

The Netgear recommendation is a good SOHO AP.

(Massive edit from my original reply follows)

What I've learned today:

this is an oversimplification

this seems to be more true to life.

The difference between 20MHz and 22MHz per channel, is the difference between



being true, and not being true. Because it appears that wi-fi channels are actually 22MHz, not 20MHz as guesstimated on dslreports, my original reply here no longer makes any sense. By the DSL reports metric, channel 10 would only overlap 11, and not 6. In the real world, unfortunately, there is a reason why my first recommendation (and the commonly portrayed standard) is to only use channels 1, 6, and 11. I used the 3, 4, 8, 9 scenario in the past, and apparently I got lucky.

Thanks jlh!