Upgrading broadband speed, worth upgrading router?

[tenohfive]

I'm about to upgrade to Virgin's 152mb broadband and am just considering whether to use Virgin's kit, my own, or to upgrade some (or all) of the below.

I currently use a TP-Link TL-WR743ND 150mb/s router with a TP-Link TL-WR702N 150mb/s range extender (bought because the HTPC was struggling with signal, but I suspect the wireless card is lunched now so once replaced I may remove the extender if it's not required) and finally a TP-Link TL-WN722NC 150mb/s USB wireless adapter for the main PC. An old style cable modem connects by ethernet to the router above.

Should I stick with what I've got, use Virgin's gear or upgrade anything? I'm hoping to be able to stream HD content to the HTPC - hence giving it some consideration.

As a side issue can anyone recommend a decent internal wireless card (or if more effective a USB one) for the HTPC? It goes without saying most HD streaming will be done on the HTPC.

[Mr E]

I would at least consider using the virgin router in pass through mode and continue using your existing NW infrastructure.
I don't bother trying to stream to my HTPC over wireless, I put cat5E in for stability reasons (the machine is also the server/media hub for the house)

[gpo746]

tenohfive said:

I'm about to upgrade to Virgin's 152mb broadband and am just considering whether to use Virgin's kit, my own, or to upgrade some (or all) of the below.

I currently use a TP-Link TL-WR743ND 150mb/s router with a TP-Link TL-WR702N 150mb/s range extender (bought because the HTPC was struggling with signal, but I suspect the wireless card is lunched now so once replaced I may remove the extender if it's not required) and finally a TP-Link TL-WN722NC 150mb/s USB wireless adapter for the main PC. An old style cable modem connects by ethernet to the router above.

Should I stick with what I've got, use Virgin's gear or upgrade anything? I'm hoping to be able to stream HD content to the HTPC - hence giving it some consideration.

As a side issue can anyone recommend a decent internal wireless card (or if more effective a USB one) for the HTPC? It goes without saying most HD streaming will be done on the HTPC.

I think your router has only 100MBPS Ethernet ports at the rear ? and a 100mbps WAN port ?
Personally Id look for something with Gigabit ports to maximise the pathway between the virgin superhub and the router (assuming you use the superhub in modem only mode)
BUT
I would wait till you get your new Superhub if its a mk2 they are quite good !

I'd also go along with the poster above me re the cat 5 cable to the HTPC - just a smoother more stable connection IMHO
I have a Samsung Smart TV and it was miles cheaper to buy cat 5 and feed it up and into the cavity from the room where the Superhub modem mode and router is across the loft and down another cavity behind where the TV is. Admittedly mates helped me and the cavitys not been stuffed with insulation but it cost me less than a tenner.

Edited by gpo746 on Tuesday 22 July 12:36

[Mr E]

Ah, yes. If your existing kit is 100Mbps, use the kit that Virgin are sending you instead.

[edeath]

I have one of these at home running my BB and rate it very highly:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prod...

[Mr E]

edeath said:

I have one of these at home running my BB and rate it very highly:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prod...

I run its big brother;
TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750

[tenohfive]

Have taken a few days to see if any niggles iron themselves out before replying.

I've setup the Virgin kit (it's a Superhub 2) and I'm not getting anywhere near the speeds promised. The Superhub is located upstairs and at most 6 metres from any of the devices (and that's being generous) with no solid walls between. All the following is using Speedtest.net.

I'm getting max 80mb/s with a laptop connected by ethernet to the Superhub, with speeds of between 20-45mb/s wirelessly for various devices (48mb/s for a mobile phone a couple of metres from the Superhub.)

Putting aside the wireless speeds for a second, I'm paying for 150mb/s and don't live anywhere rural so what sort of speed (through ethernet) should I realistically expect? I didn't think I'd ever see 150mb/s, but is 115-120mb/s during non-peak hours realistic? I'm going to have a chat with VM's broadband technical support later so I was just wondering what's likely to be considered acceptable.

Second question, if 80mb/s is less than I should reasonably be expecting could it be the Superhub that's the cause of the low wireless speeds or is it likely to be my gear?

[Mr E]

I consistently see pretty much exactly the rate I pay for (I think I'm on 120Mb). Sounds like there's a problem with your connection and you probably need to call them...

[Accelebrate]

I spent a reasonable amount of time and money building a decent wired network and installing multiple expensive access points so that I can get my full broadband speed wirelessly in every room (admittedly 'only' 80Mb). With hindsight I do sometimes wonder why, outside the world of running speedtests against a server that's geographically as close as possible it's very rare that I'm able or have the need to max out my connection on a single device.

[FuzzyLogic]

tenohfive said:

I'm getting max 80mb/s with a laptop connected by ethernet to the Superhub, with speeds of between 20-45mb/s wirelessly for various devices (48mb/s for a mobile phone a couple of metres from the Superhub.)

Putting aside the wireless speeds for a second, I'm paying for 150mb/s and don't live anywhere rural so what sort of speed (through ethernet) should I realistically expect? I didn't think I'd ever see 150mb/s, but is 115-120mb/s during non-peak hours realistic? I'm going to have a chat with VM's broadband technical support later so I was just wondering what's likely to be considered acceptable.

Second question, if 80mb/s is less than I should reasonably be expecting could it be the Superhub that's the cause of the low wireless speeds or is it likely to be my gear?

What speed is the network card in your laptop? If it is an older 100Mbps network card (i.e. not the newer 1Gbps capable), then 80Mbps sounds about right.

Your wireless speed should definitely be faster though. I have wireless N from my superhub and can easily maintain an average of 65 to 68Mbps via my laptop. If I plug my laptop in, I consistently get just over 100Mbps (100Mb connection) at any time of day or night.

Try having a play with the wireless 'channel' & try using only the 2.5GHz band (turn the 5GHz off) and see if that improves things..

[megaphone]

Many phones and iPads won't run at very high speeds, e.g. my old iPhone 3 maxs out at 12Mbs, my iPad1 at about 30Mbs. For fastest speeds you need to be running on 'N' wifi. loads of things could be affecting the WiFi speed, I would actually do the opposite to what has been suggested above, well at least for a test. Turn off 2.4ghz and run at 5ghz, if your devices are compatible.

As for the ethernet speed, again is you laptop capable of running at 152Mbs? Maybe try a newer gigabit device?

[tank slapper]

Bear in mind that wireless speeds depend on a lot of factors. Firstly both the router and the client have to have the capability to communicate at high speed. Many devices, even though they support wireless N or AC will only have a single antenna. For example, my Nexus 5 will connect to my Asus RT-N66U at 72 Mbps on 2.4 GHz, which gives a throughput of 50-60 Mbps and 135 Mbps on 5 Ghz with a throughput of about 120Mbps. The router can theoretically do 450 Mbps, but it requires the client to have the capability to connect to 3 channels simultaneously, and I've yet to see anything get close to that in reality. Using gigabit ethernet I get an internet speed of 160 Mbps with no problems.

Being radio based, wifi has to share bandwidth with anything else using the same frequencies. If neighbours have wifi using the same or overlapping channels you will see a performance reduction. The 2.4 GHz band is especially bad for this, but 5 GHz is much clearer. If you have the option to use it then it's worth it, but you won't get as good range.

The Virginmedia superhubs are generally a bit crap. I found their wifi signal to be weak and unreliable. It was very noticeable when I changed the router, as in the front room (through 3 walls from the router) the signal went from marginal to almost perfect. Worse though, the superhub performance degraded over time. If you left it for a period of time without rebooting it, the connection would become steadily worse until it was necessary to power cycle it. I use thinkbroadband's quality checker, and you could see the minimum ping time getting steadily longer with more variability. Since changing to the Asus router and switching the virgin hub to modem only its been completely consistent.

[Polariz]

The only fair test is to use wired only connections when performing the speed tests.

I recently upgraded my Virgin to the 100Mbit service and with the Superhub v2 I get 105Mbit! Woohoo for free stuff.

However, I use a VPN connection to work via a Cisco ASA 5505 and the only way to do what I want to do is to make the Superhub drop into passthrough mode (Thus losing the wireless, which works really well) and then connect the ASA to the Superhub. This makes my connection drop to a max of around 82Mbit.

I use a Cisco Access Point plugged into the PoE port to get wireless in the house but because of the antenna type it doesn't have as good coverage as the Virgin kit.

The latest Superhub really is a nice box - if you have no reason like I do to change it, then keep it in play. It sounds like it won't be the Superhub holding you up - consider talking to the ISP to see what they can do on the head-end.

[skelters]

Superhub here too but thinking on the Wireless mentioned above.

Have you tried resetting the router back to factory settings?




Here's what I'm getting on Wireless. Bit slow tonight as it's usually around 127 - 132 Mbps

[tenohfive]

Thanks for all the responses, I'll try and respond to those that I understood:

Firstly, running cables around the house is something I'm keen to avoid if at all possible. It's not a big house so if I can invest in wireless gear that'll get me similar results then I'd rather do that. (Obviously for testing I'm going to connect directly to the modem though.) Last resort I'll consider seeing if VM can move the broadband downstairs to where the TV connection comes in (about 3ft from the HTPC.)

The wireless card in the laptop is dated which I hadn't considered, and it's a real fly in the ointment for speaking to technical support. I don't know how to find the exact speed (if anyone can talk me through on XP then I'll post it up), I can only say it's a Broadcomm 802.11g network adapter fitted in a 4-5 year old laptop. I'm not sure how I'm going to get around that, short of either borrowing a laptop or dragging the desktop upstairs (probably does need a spring clean, but it's hassle I could have done without.) Thanks for making me consider it though.

The Superhub is on default settings already. It's only been setup a week and it's had one reset in that time - no difference in speeds.

I didn't consider channels etc as during setup the instructions said that it'd automatically set itself to the least populated channel. I'll have to manually confirm if that's the case, alongside switching 2.4 & 5ghz on and off respectively.

[rasto]

I upgraded to the VM 150 service last week too. For wired connections I was getting bang on 150 and wireless (when it worked) around 80. But the wireless reliability was so abysmal (constant lock ups requiring device reboots) that I switched back to modem mode and my old router. My router is so old that I can't currently take advantage of the new speeds so I will upgrade it at some point. The super hub 2 really is a shockingly bad bit of kit and a bit of googling suggests that I'm not the only one experiencing these issues.

[tank slapper]

tenohfive said:

I didn't consider channels etc as during setup the instructions said that it'd automatically set itself to the least populated channel. I'll have to manually confirm if that's the case, alongside switching 2.4 & 5ghz on and off respectively.

The problem with the router choosing the channel is that it will select one that it thinks is best, based on what it can see. This is fine, except that it is possible the channel it selects is not so clear where the wireless device is actually going to be used. The best way to do it is to use a phone app such as Wifi Analyser or inSSIDer to have a look at what channels are occupied in the locations where the device will be used, and then select the clearest one manually. Many routers are set to use channel 6 or 11 by default, and so you can see several networks piled on top of each other. Those channels at either end of the band, 1 and 13 are usually more clear. 5 GHz doesn't have the same problem as the signals don't travel as far, and the channels are spread out more.

If you are getting 45 Mbps from an 802.11g device that's pretty good, since the maximum is 54 Mbps before you account for the protocol overheads.

[gpo746]

rasto said:

I upgraded to the VM 150 service last week too. For wired connections I was getting bang on 150 and wireless (when it worked) around 80. But the wireless reliability was so abysmal (constant lock ups requiring device reboots) that I switched back to modem mode and my old router. My router is so old that I can't currently take advantage of the new speeds so I will upgrade it at some point. The super hub 2 really is a shockingly bad bit of kit and a bit of googling suggests that I'm not the only one experiencing these issues.

This superhub:
http://store.virginmedia.com/broadband/wireless-br... ?

[gpo746]

tenohfive said:

Thanks for all the responses, I'll try and respond to those that I understood:

Firstly, running cables around the house is something I'm keen to avoid if at all possible. It's not a big house so if I can invest in wireless gear that'll get me similar results then I'd rather do that. (Obviously for testing I'm going to connect directly to the modem though.) Last resort I'll consider seeing if VM can move the broadband downstairs to where the TV connection comes in (about 3ft from the HTPC.)

The wireless card in the laptop is dated which I hadn't considered, and it's a real fly in the ointment for speaking to technical support. I don't know how to find the exact speed (if anyone can talk me through on XP then I'll post it up), I can only say it's a Broadcomm 802.11g network adapter fitted in a 4-5 year old laptop. I'm not sure how I'm going to get around that, short of either borrowing a laptop or dragging the desktop upstairs (probably does need a spring clean, but it's hassle I could have done without.) Thanks for making me consider it though.

The Superhub is on default settings already. It's only been setup a week and it's had one reset in that time - no difference in speeds.

I didn't consider channels etc as during setup the instructions said that it'd automatically set itself to the least populated channel. I'll have to manually confirm if that's the case, alongside switching 2.4 & 5ghz on and off respectively.

Not too much to buy:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wifi-150Mbps-Wireless-Ad...

[rasto]

gpo746 said:

This superhub:
http://store.virginmedia.com/broadband/wireless-br... ?

That's the one.