Dual vs Single band Wireless N for a house - E4200 vs RT-N16

I

investinwaffles

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 26, 2010
Messages
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Hey guys, I have a huge dilema on my hands! My trusty wrt54g just died on me and I need to get a new one ASAP. I unfortunately dont have time for this right now, and it died at a really bad time (have 3 papers due this week!!).

Anyway, I live in a house and I am trying to decide between the RT-n16 and the E4200 (literally double the price). I will probably always be in either a small apartment (interference but short distances), or a house without much interference. Also, I hate wireless internet except for general internet browsing while sitting on the couch. I will ALWAYS try to hardwire if I can and everything that is really high bandwidth is hardwired.

What would you choose?? The Asus has upgradable antennas which I really like and I don't have ANYTHING that does dual-band N at the moment and I don't really see that changing for a year or two. Right now I have 1 802.11G laptop, and the rest are all draft N, and Im pretty sure my xbox 360s is as well (my other xbox is hardwired).
I have about 8 computers hardwired with cat6 (dell 2716 GbE switch), and my only real requirements are:

Gigabit WAN port (and ethernet ports, but thats a given)
Good range - I have double-panes windows and my 54g with high gain antennas JUST cut it when I was in the backyard streaming netflix
Open-Source firmware support (DDWRT, OPENWRT, or Tomato are all acceptable)

CLIFFNOTES:
I have no idea what to get, nor do I have the time to research it right now. Im just looking for some insight before I pull the trigger on the ASUS (since it seems to have everything I need, and is half the price of the other routers. Tripple bonus points if I can get it using amazon prime. I want to order it tonight...


RT-16N ($90 w/ prime shipping)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00387G6R8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

E4200 - 160 w/ Prime Shipping
http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys...eous-Wireless-N/dp/B004K1EZDS/ref=pd_sbs_pc_1

WNDR4500 - $180!!!!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...+-+Wireless+Routers-_-Netgear+Inc.-_-33122435
 
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As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Did a ton of reading, and decided to go with the RT-N56U over the -N16 and E4200 based on lots of reading and the fact that neither has DDWRT support currently.

If asus ever releases an N66 or 76 based on a Broadcom chipsed (and thus dd-wrt support) ill be all over it. In the meantime, I dont have my time to hold my breath so I pulled the trigger. $130 + 5 for overnight shipping through amazon prime for the highest benchmarking router fits the bill pretty well for me :)

Thanks for the help, didnt have time to actually sit down and do any reading till tonight. Too bad I blew all my MW3 time for the night researching routers :mad: :p
 
Cool glad you picked that one in the end it really is a beast for the money , ill be adding it to my home soon ,and my dlink 655 will be used as a bridge to my entertainment center :D
 
Better choice...the newer Asus. The N16 model was competition for your old wrt54gl. The N56 model is current, and wicked fast.

Running 2x wireless networks is great if you have legacy G clients....as your N clients can stay on their own N network and run at full speed, instead of slowing down because you have an old G client connect.
 
Err, ok I just shat brix

So I have comcast 100mpbs residential service and they came out and retrofitted the house with a high-speed line (had to dig up the yard to do so). Using my WRT54G, I have thus maxed out my speedtest rates at about 50mbps. I pretty much figured that it was just the nature of the game (not hitting rated speeds).

So my Asus RT-N56u came today thanks to amazon prime + Saturday delivery (perfect timing, only free time for the next month).
Set the ***** up and configured it exactly how I wanted it (took about an hour to figure everything out and clone my old DDWRT settings manually). My WRT54g died on me a week ago, so ive been using a borrowed netgear WPN824 rangemax router. It has been actually pretty so good that I have not noticed the loss of my WRT54g.

Anyway, the ****ting brix part are the speedtests. They pretty much speak for themselves. Ran the tests about 10 times or so now to confirm that I am not tripping. :uhh:

ASUS
150529d1321148370-3-7-home-theater-computer-electronics-thread-1588961718.png


NETGEAR - similar to my Linksys results
150530d1321148404-3-7-home-theater-computer-electronics-thread-1588948725.png


Yes, my upload speeds still blow donkey balls but its 7PM on a Saturday night - ill test it at 4AM and see how it fares again :evil:
Gonna also do some file transfer tests over lan and see what kind of speeds I can hit :D

I have always been a cisco/linksys fanboy and I almost bought the E4200 just because it says "CISCO" emblazoned on the front but I am really **** impressed with the asus - as a total network noob. :)

Thanks for the reccomendation guys. Really happy I went with the Asus.

Only gripe is with that the 5ghz band is worthless unless i am very close to the router (and most of the time I am not). Oh well, may come in handy if I move into an apartment in the future.


One quick question though, I have a WHS box so I have no need for the filesharing functions. Will turning them off make my router "faster" (use less resources and thus be faster)??
 
Your old router only had a 10/100 wan port, your new beast has a 10/100/1000 wan port hence that giant speed bump :D


Turning off the file sharing function should not make any difference.

The 5ghz helps if you had a lot of interference on your 2.4ghz channels , but it cant go through walls as easily nor does it have the same range as 2.4 ghz.
 
WNDR3700 / 4500 or GTFO. Don't know why anyone was recommending anything else considering the OP's top end budget. Glad you're happy with the ASUS though, OP.
 
Oppy said:
Your old router only had a 10/100 wan port, your new beast has a 10/100/1000 wan port hence that giant speed bump :D
Click to expand...

That doesn't make any sense to me. 10/100 is more than 43% efficient.
 
450 said:
That doesn't make any sense to me. 10/100 is more than 43% efficient.
Click to expand...

True I was vague , his previous router just didn't have the processing power to do the job on the 100Mb side of things , much like a crappy nic of the days of old.
 
Oppy said:
Your old router only had a 10/100 wan port, your new beast has a 10/100/1000 wan port hence that giant speed bump :D.
Click to expand...

Actually, the 100 meg WAN port would not have been the bottleneck if he was benchmarking at 90 megs...looking at the easy math.

The Asus has 128 megs of RAM and a 500 MHz processor. The gigabit port does naturally come into play to allow it to get up to over 800 megs of throughput.
His old wrt54....somewhere from 166 to 220MHz and 8 or 16 megs of RAM..depending on which version he had.
 
silent-circuit said:
WNDR3700 / 4500 or GTFO. Don't know why anyone was recommending anything else considering the OP's top end budget. Glad you're happy with the ASUS though, OP.
Click to expand...

While the wndr has been a great router that, even though it's not current generation anymore, it's still very good......there are several other "very good" choices also....all of which leave the 3700 in the dust speed wise. The Asus is almost twice as fast in throughput as your 3700.
 
silent-circuit said:
WNDR3700 / 4500 or GTFO. Don't know why anyone was recommending anything else considering the OP's top end budget. Glad you're happy with the ASUS though, OP.
Click to expand...

Might want to have a look at these reviews:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/74-wan-to-lan

And like I said wireless is not a concern for me so I did not take it into much consideration. The gigabit speeds this Asus is capable of are absolutely incredible and I haven't reset it yet. Gonna leave it on and do some more speed-tests early Saturday morning to see what It can do!!

I know speed-tests are inconclusive but I have been hitting 85+mbps consistently with this new router, connected to my Comcast Docsis 3.0 cable modem (gigabyte wan). :)

And the 2.4ghz signal of this asus absolutely permeates walls and windows! I have double-pained ceramic coated windows and I used to get 1-1.5mbps download speeds outside. Now I hit 5-8 without issue (more than enough to watch a youtube video without it buffering IMO).

Really cant thank you guys enough for pointing me in the right direction!!! :)
 
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