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My first Dual Band router sucks...

CantidoCantido Registered User regular
edited October 2011 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Linksys was being a bunch of shitheads to me, so I got a Netgear Dual Band router, and it's performance is pretty bad.

The first major problem is that the wireless connection stops working once or twice a day. I have to go to the router and turn it off, then on again to get a connection going. It's getting really frustrating for my family. My brother moved away, and soon I will be leaving to Air Force tech school, so I need to either permanently fix this or teach my family how to work a router's internal setting when I myself don't understand them fully.

The second problem is this. The two router connections that this router produces are NETGEAR and NETGEAR-5G. The 5G connection is horrible. The only device in the house that is Wireless N is my desktop's Netgear adapter. Everything else in the house is Wireless G. How do I make the most out of a Dual Band router?

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Posts

  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    You probably don't need dual band, honestly. Why not stick with a regular N-router for now? I've found most dual-band routers to be fairly flaky, to be honest. The Linksys I used to have would just disconnect a handful of clients and simply stop allowing new connections (leaving half the devices in the house connected, and half stranded) until I unplugged the little bastard. Every. Damn. Day.

    Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
  • punkpunk Professional Network Nerd Phoenix, AZRegistered User regular
    I agree with minor incident, you probably don't need a dual-band router. Unless you operate in an area that has a high concentration of WiFi networks or you suffer interference/congestion on the 2.4GHz band from other sources (microwaves, Bluetooth, car alarms, etc.), there is no real benefit when comparing 2.4GHz to 5GHz. In fact, your coverage could be reduced; 5GHz is more prone to attenuation (both from physical obstructions and from distance) because it is a higher frequency.

    If, however, your area is all a-crapped up with 2.4GHz garbage, 5GHz could get you out of some serious interference problems. Only 802.11a and 802.11n run on the 5GHz band, and I'm assuming you're not going to be regressing back to 802.11a. When running 802.11n, it's best to run it in a pure 5GHz environment as well, if possible.

    As for your disconnect issues, it could be a lot of different things. If you've ruled out external interference or congestion on the channel that you're running on, you could have a firmware or hardware problem. You could try to update the firmware on your new router to the latest revision available from the manufacturer. If you continue to have issues after a firmware upgrade, or if an upgrade is not possible, you could try to exchange the router for another to see if the problem goes away. I'm not sure where you're at in terms of troubleshooting, so I'm not sure what you've done so far to identify the issue.

    You also mentioned that your 5GHz connection is horrible. Since your desktop is the only one with an 802.11n adapter, any other device in the house will only be able to use 802.11a on the 5GHz band, assuming they support 802.11a. While 802.11a can support around 54Mbps, "real-world" you'll probably see about 20Mbps. You didn't define "horrible," though. I'm just assuming it's speed compared to 802.11g or 802.11n. :)

    And to further add on to what minor incident said, I hear a lot of complaints about consumer-grade 5GHz routers. Feature-limited, quirky, random quality problems, etc. The enterprise side of 5GHz is doing much better, but you pay for it!

    I have a Linksys E4200 myself, but I don't run in the 5GHz band because all of my wireless products don't support 802.11n at 5GHz (thanks, Apple!) except my work laptop, which I don't use often. So unfortunately, I can't offer a comparison for you there.

  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    The way you should have it running is your N device on the 5ghz band and all the G devices at 2.4ghz.

    I might be tempted to just run G at 2.4ghz and turn off the 5ghz band and see if things work better.

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  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    punk wrote:
    I agree with minor incident, you probably don't need a dual-band router. Unless you operate in an area that has a high concentration of WiFi networks or you suffer interference/congestion on the 2.4GHz band from other sources (microwaves, Bluetooth, car alarms, etc.), there is no real benefit when comparing 2.4GHz to 5GHz. In fact, your coverage could be reduced; 5GHz is more prone to attenuation (both from physical obstructions and from distance) because it is a higher frequency.

    If, however, your area is all a-crapped up with 2.4GHz garbage, 5GHz could get you out of some serious interference problems. Only 802.11a and 802.11n run on the 5GHz band, and I'm assuming you're not going to be regressing back to 802.11a. When running 802.11n, it's best to run it in a pure 5GHz environment as well, if possible.

    As for your disconnect issues, it could be a lot of different things. If you've ruled out external interference or congestion on the channel that you're running on, you could have a firmware or hardware problem. You could try to update the firmware on your new router to the latest revision available from the manufacturer. If you continue to have issues after a firmware upgrade, or if an upgrade is not possible, you could try to exchange the router for another to see if the problem goes away. I'm not sure where you're at in terms of troubleshooting, so I'm not sure what you've done so far to identify the issue.

    You also mentioned that your 5GHz connection is horrible. Since your desktop is the only one with an 802.11n adapter, any other device in the house will only be able to use 802.11a on the 5GHz band, assuming they support 802.11a. While 802.11a can support around 54Mbps, "real-world" you'll probably see about 20Mbps. You didn't define "horrible," though. I'm just assuming it's speed compared to 802.11g or 802.11n. :)

    And to further add on to what minor incident said, I hear a lot of complaints about consumer-grade 5GHz routers. Feature-limited, quirky, random quality problems, etc. The enterprise side of 5GHz is doing much better, but you pay for it!

    I have a Linksys E4200 myself, but I don't run in the 5GHz band because all of my wireless products don't support 802.11n at 5GHz (thanks, Apple!) except my work laptop, which I don't use often. So unfortunately, I can't offer a comparison for you there.

    I get 4 bars of connectivity and fast speed on the 2.4Ghz, and only two bars and slower speed on the 5Ghz on my router.

    I just checked the firmware and it's up to date.

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • SpenzkriegSpenzkrieg eh's a pretty cool guy Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Cantido wrote:
    I get 4 bars of connectivity and fast speed on the 2.4Ghz, and only two bars and slower speed on the 5Ghz on my router.

    I just checked the firmware and it's up to date.

    How far away from the router are you? Being a higher frequency... the 5GHz band has much lower range than 2.4 does.

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  • Lord JezoLord Jezo Registered User regular
    Were you the one that posted a thread about what router to get a while ago? I think in that one I said something about the Netgear one. Same thing happened to me, whole thing needed to be rebooted at least once a day. No one could solve it. Found a few posts on their forums about the same thing happening to others.

    Decided it wasn't worth my time, I returned it to Amazon, got a Cisco (Linksys) refurb single band N router for cheaper and have had hardly a problem since.

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  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    I am far away, so that explains it.
    Lord Jezo wrote:
    Were you the one that posted a thread about what router to get a while ago? I think in that one I said something about the Netgear one. Same thing happened to me, whole thing needed to be rebooted at least once a day. No one could solve it. Found a few posts on their forums about the same thing happening to others.

    Decided it wasn't worth my time, I returned it to Amazon, got a Cisco (Linksys) refurb single band N router for cheaper and have had hardly a problem since.

    I did buy a refurbished Cisco Linksys N Router....and it could not power on. I returned it and am about to order it again hoping it works this time.

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • FortyOzSpartanFortyOzSpartan Registered User new member
    Yeah, it should be noted that 5 GHz is a really, really crappy band for wireless. At least in my opinion. My house is old with plaster and lathe walls and my 5 GHz signal barely makes it upstairs, maybe 30 feet to the office. I'd rather just use N at 2.4 GHz but my printer is G-only. Luckily that just died, so I might live the dream yet.

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