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Is it time to upgrade our router
Real World use and performance in my home network set up and ideas for an upgrade. First Here is My current home set up Router is a : Netgear Nighthawk x4 AC2350 Smart Wifi Router R7500 v1 ...
As for Fiber.... we will have to see if they really can run it to our house... United Communications has partnered with Middle Tennessee Electric and they are running the fiber lines on the MTE poles and then from the pole they run it to the back of your house where the Electric line is run ... the problem is where they run our power and where I need the Fiber to end up may be a problem getting to, we will see. My guess I am thinking by summer, they first said 1st quarter 2023 but It looks like they are running behind so I'm not holding my breath.
The reason I have not thought about the Mesh systems is that to better my wifi upstairs I ran a trend net access point that is hooked up for wifi only with private and guest access.. all other devices in that area are hardwire home run. As for our studio that is in another building it has a ethernet line run to the studio and in the studio I have a router - access point and my studio computes are connected via hardwire and I have a private and wifi settings for folks that come to the studio right now I am getting full speed in the studio with this set up.
You mentioned dual band mesh and I took a look at what I could find on that...I'm not sure it it would be much different than what we already have with the exception of Wifi 6 and at that point I'd change out our wifi cards to the AX200 modules.
Any large downloads and uploads are done hardwired on a desktop or notebook plugged in, fiber would be nice as our upload speed is max 20 Mbps so the faster fiber would open another door for me.
I have been experimenting with the Eufy wireless camera's, they are pretty neat where the cameras talk to a hub to store footage and it talks on a separate encrypted 2.4gz wifi channel so far I am really impressed at what I am seeing but I've just started to set things up but saying that it is a separate situation to my Network needs.
Finally in looking at the mesh stuff the difference between dual and tri channel isn't that much and I'd probably step up to the tri channel to future proof my set up... but until actually get them to bring me fiber it does not make sense to do anything at all... at 500Mbps I seem to be doing just fine.
If its working fine, I'd keep it.
Once you start hitting that 250-300mbps with devices, there isn't much notice in speed differences unless you're downloading massive files. (in my experience)
And while the intel 9260's are capable of more speed, you probably won't notice a whole lot of real world performance differences.
The 9260's can hit the magically 1733mbps but its with specific technology (like the R7800/ XR500). Is it worth upgrading to a *slightly* better router?
And if you don't have AX devices, its not much point upgrading to AX (unless you plan on upgrading devices).
Again, for the time being, I'd just keep using it. AX prices will only keep coming down plus more devices will keep being released with AX technology. so when you finally have a couple that could benefit, then you can upgrade and reap the benefits. For the time being, with your setup, you won't really see much.
Piemans, thanks so much for your answer and I appreciate your feedback... Yep, it it's not broke...perfect suggestion. I've had Networks through out our homes for years and always felt if you can hardwire and homerun everything connection problems are almost non existent. Funny, when we built this house in 2006 if I recall the cable was just changing from Cat 4 to Cat 5 and so I figured I'd go ahead and go with Cat 5 and 1 GB switch's.
In 2017 Spectrum went from 60mbps to I think 200 Mbps and I changed out the router to the R7500 V1 (V2 had not come out) and both hard wire and wifi was was maxing out at the time. Then Spectrum kept increasing speed and offered 500MBps and I jumped on it but I had to change the Wifi cards in both of our notebooks. . I am not sure how much more I can push with Wifi at this point and if it even matters... Any large file transfers I do on a desktop and we have a recording studio so we have to transfer and download multiple files and the hardwire works great!
United Communications starting to put in Fiber and 1 gb up and down for 3 years at $49.95 may be worth the hassle of signing up but I really didn't want to get in to changing a bunch of equipment until I see that the fiber is stable. From all that i see, my current set up the hardwire devices should get full speed... and if I get 400Mbps on Wifi I'll be happy.... So, that's were we are ... waiting for the the GB install and I'll evaluate things then. but with only a couple of devices on Wifi "m not going to rush in to it.
Thanks again for your comment and feedback ... .
I'm a bit jealous of the fibre option. Still stuck on cable with limited upload speed and data caps.
Oh well.
I do have to say, I really didn't notice a whole lot of difference going from 300-500-1gig service. Usually the bottleneck is the servers you're using as websites aren't going to let you saturate their service. So they limit the speeds. Again, its just mainly speedtesting or downloading massive files from servers designed to do so that I see a regular day usage difference.
And you picked well. If you're wired for gigabit, check into mesh for your next system. The benefit to having hardwired is you can pick up a cheap (ish) dual band mesh system and hardwire in the satellites. makes them perform as good (better in some cases) as the triband systems with the dedicated wireless backhaul. My house isn't huge but after switching to mesh (and getting used to it), I wouldn't look back. Its just better coverage and ease of use. My wife doesn't complain because there's multiple networks to connect to.
As for Fiber.... we will have to see if they really can run it to our house... United Communications has partnered with Middle Tennessee Electric and they are running the fiber lines on the MTE poles and then from the pole they run it to the back of your house where the Electric line is run ... the problem is where they run our power and where I need the Fiber to end up may be a problem getting to, we will see. My guess I am thinking by summer, they first said 1st quarter 2023 but It looks like they are running behind so I'm not holding my breath.
The reason I have not thought about the Mesh systems is that to better my wifi upstairs I ran a trend net access point that is hooked up for wifi only with private and guest access.. all other devices in that area are hardwire home run. As for our studio that is in another building it has a ethernet line run to the studio and in the studio I have a router - access point and my studio computes are connected via hardwire and I have a private and wifi settings for folks that come to the studio right now I am getting full speed in the studio with this set up.
You mentioned dual band mesh and I took a look at what I could find on that...I'm not sure it it would be much different than what we already have with the exception of Wifi 6 and at that point I'd change out our wifi cards to the AX200 modules.
Any large downloads and uploads are done hardwired on a desktop or notebook plugged in, fiber would be nice as our upload speed is max 20 Mbps so the faster fiber would open another door for me.
I have been experimenting with the Eufy wireless camera's, they are pretty neat where the cameras talk to a hub to store footage and it talks on a separate encrypted 2.4gz wifi channel so far I am really impressed at what I am seeing but I've just started to set things up but saying that it is a separate situation to my Network needs.
Finally in looking at the mesh stuff the difference between dual and tri channel isn't that much and I'd probably step up to the tri channel to future proof my set up... but until actually get them to bring me fiber it does not make sense to do anything at all... at 500Mbps I seem to be doing just fine.