Weak wireless signal/range, new router needed. Mostly clueless. Any recommendations?

vard

Hi guys, I'm currently using a standard router which was supplied for free with my O2/Eircom internet. The actual speed delivered to the house is good, at 40-50 mbps up/down. The problem is, I'm forced to use wireless connections and the range/speed is piss poor.

I purchased a few powerline adapters and extenders, but they seemed to just degrade the quality. With the powerline adapters I'm guessing there's too much interference and they end up being even slower than the hit/miss wifi.

I'd like to replace the router with something that will significantly increase the range and speed. I often stream content from a media server, so something up to that task would be ideal. I don't mind spending a fair chunk if I can get a router that will allow me to ditch all these extenders and send a strong signal throughout the house.

What's the best router out there at the moment? I'd be looking to buy either online or possibly in Harvey Norman in store if you can recommend anything there!

Cheers

syklops

In my experience, Wireless routers are very much a mixed bag. There are very few brands I trust implicitly. I used to be a big fan of Linksys, but after they were bought by Cisco which is a brand Id rate highly my mileage really varied and more than one AP I had was buggy and unreliable. Linksys were the creators of the very hackable(the good kind of hackable) WRT-54g which allowed you to customise the bejaysus out of and was a great bit of kit for the price of about 80 euros, but

I was never a fan of Belkin, but against my advice my dad bought one about 5 years ago and its never given a single problem and has been rebooted about twice in the last 5 years.

The only equipment ive had zero problems with in the last ~4 years were TP-Link and the router I got from Digiweb called FritzBox.

Between my time doing Tech support professionally, tech support for friends and family, and all my other experience, I have seen 100 euro routers which were crap and 20 euro routers which did what it said on the tin and just worked, so its a bit of a lottery. Sorry i can't be more helpful.

mass_debater

If you're an eFibre customer ask Eir for an f2000, it's dual band and supports the latest. 802.11ac standard. If it's eFibre you cannot just add a modem, whatever you get needs to supports a technology called vectoring. You can also bridge the modem you've got and add a decent cable router, see this thread about the tplink archer series http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057367191/32/#post97870154

vard

That's a brilliant help, thanks to both of you for the input

magentis

I have a tp link archer c7 and have found it excellent no problems at all,after much trouble with Upc ones.I just turned wifi off on the upc modem and ran a cat 6 cable from it to the c7 assigning it with 192.168.1.xx range.

A friend has the archer c9 and he is happy with it too.

the_syco

vard wrote: »

The problem is, I'm forced to use wireless connections and the range/speed is piss poor.

Usually I'd say homeplug, but as you've already tried that (I acknowledge they don't work for everyone), why can't you use CAT5?