Looking for a new router setup... need some options/help

[dr.stevil]

So my current network at home is pretty basic. The router & modem is in the bedroom with my Gaming PC, PS3 & AppleTV all hardwired with Cat-5. Then I have various iPhone's, iPod's, PS3's, Laptop's and tablet's connecting via WiFi (darn kids).

I use my gaming machine as a Plex Media Server as well, so at any given time, 2 or more AppleTV's and/or PS3's could be streaming content from that box to TV's in the house... not to mention online gaming, surfing the internet, Netflix and other normal things you'd do on WiFi. The signal in the living room is also pretty dicey. The AppleTV STB, for example, has trouble maintaining a decent connection and frequently drops the signal... which is a huge PITA for a streaming box lol. To add to the challenge, running Cat5 outside of the bedroom, along the baseboard/etc is a no-go. My Gf will kill me (already tried it) and drilling through walls is also a no go as there are several large sliding pocket doors that get in the way.


With all that said, since our current router severely lacks in parental controls and range is iffy, I want a new one. What would you recommend for this type of usage? I'd also like to add Steam in-home-streaming to the requirements... which needs plenty of bandwith and low latency.

From what I understand, I'd benefit from a 5ghz wireless N, but since some of the devices in my house doesn't support N, that's a no go. I've tried it before and the kids couldn't connect with their game consoles.

Is there any router that supports both N and G simultaneously? What about power-line Ethernet? I'm open to suggestions.

 

[ob1]

Most wireless routers support G and N at the same time. I have a similar setup, lots of wireless devices like phones, chromecasts, game consoles, etc. My current DHCP requires 29 addresses actually, between the wired and wireless. I used to use a DLink DGL4100 then a DGL4500 and thought life was good. I just recently went to an Asus AC66/AC68 and wow, what an upgrade. The wireless range and transfer rates are just out of this world compared to what I was using. I mean it is actually so much better and I would never have known because I thought the DGL series was supposed to be good/best but it was not. I would try out one of the newer routers, even if you don't need the AC spec speeds because even my N connections now are consistently 150 Mbps connections and actually transfer data so much better than before. I can stream to 3 chromecasts from my Plex server with no issues/buffering while I game on BF4/PD2/PoE etc. If you don't like the results when you try one out, just return it.

 

[firedrow]

Powerline adapters work pretty well. I have a set of older 35 Mbps units and stream across the house all the time. I have 1 in the bedroom attached to my phone so I can connect to my PBX. 1 in the living room connected to my HTPC and XBOX360. 1 in the office connected to the 2 servers. 1 in the rear of the living room connected to the router. Works great. So I bet the newer 500 Mbps unit will run better. They also make EoP (Ethernet over Powerline) access points that will work with your existing EoP setup. So use the EoP adapters to add devices to the network and EoP WAPs to extend wireless coverage.

 

[dr.stevil]

Thanks guys.

So last night I dug out an old Airport Express router and was able to bridge it with my current router, but setup a separate WiFi network which actually worked pretty well. So the original Wifi network is setup for a/b/g and the Airport network is setup for g/n. The only issue I ran into was range kind of sucked on the Airport (which is why I replaced it lol)

You guys know anything about MoCA setups? I've heard good thing about them for media streaming and such. I'd like to try the powerline setup, but my house is really old... so I have my doubts about it's reliability.