Wifi and differing bands and a/b/g/n/ac adapters

[Stealthy_Singh]

I have an issue with my network that is affecting streaming video. It also affects browsing in some areas of the house. I am looking to replace my talk talk hawaei 533 router with a dual band one. My issue is I am streaming via powerline adapters and the speed is not sufficient. I have eliminated all other issues, I can get decent speed via wifi from where I want to stream to. However I have a computer in my loft which I use and the powerline is limiting speed again and I want to use wifi here too.

 

I still have a PS3 which works fine with wifi but this only has a G adapter. I am looking for a dual band N router. Now if I have one band running just wireless N or even ac and another band wireless g/n. Will this have an impact on the network speeds? I understand with mixing b/g/n this used to be case, but I can't find a definitive answer about modern routers regarding this. I would have thought using different bands would have eliminated this. I hope I explained the problem properly.

 

Thanks

[+Fahim S. MVC]

What speed of Powerline adaptor? What quality of video?

[Brian M. Veteran]

Have you checked for powerline interference?

I had a random issue with my home plugs causing 2mbps speed on a link I know usually carries ~100mbps. Turned out that the cause was the new 12v PSU I'd put on the router attached to it was adding noise to the circuit. Pulling the 12v adapter rocketed the speed up. New PSU on the router and all was back to normal.

As for routers, I'd recommend the Airport Extreme. It's configuration is a bit basic, but it has by far the best wireless signal I've found on a consumer router. It has a/n/ac on the 5GHz band, and g/n on the 2.4GHz band from what I remember.

[Stealthy_Singh]

Fahim the powerline adapters are D-link 200Mbps. I think it's the wiring in my house and I'm not going to down that route. The powerline adapters have been sketchy from the start but were ok for general stuff back when I only had wireless B adapters. However for streaming HD content they are a no go.

 

The streaming isn't a software issue as when the playstation and the PC are connected to the router with a wire there is no issue. It seems it's a bandwidth issue which I'm putting down to the powerline adapters. Streaming HD stuff from my phone over wifi to the PS3 and the chromecast also works. It's just the PC in the other room.

 

The talk talk router has wireless N capabilities but is only single band and I don't want the play station slowing things down with it's G adapter.

 

Thanks for the router recommendation Brian but before I even look at exactly which router I get I just wanted to check what I want to do with the dual band is possible and it will stop the playstation from affecting adapters capable of N/AC wifi.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah your saying wifi is faster than powerline - must be really old powerline, gen 1 stuff?

 

Do me a favor - run speed test..  What do you get, either simple file copy with robocopy

 

something like

 

 

So first did a simple wire test of what I can actually see for bandwidth with nor file copy.. Then actually copied a file from my storage box to my box via the drive I have mapped to its share z:

 

This is not powerline - but what speeds to do see for such test?

 

users seem to like gui better?  So here are a couple you can just unzip and run

 

http://www.zachsaw.com/?pg=lanbench_tcp_network_benchmark

http://sourceforge.net/projects/netiogui/

 

 

 

There are pretty much unzip run 1 server and one client, etc..  As you can see in the 900Mbps on all tests..  So lets see what you see over your powerline connection.

 

As to dual band -- Yes a dual band router works fine, it has 2 different radios - what I would not do if your worried about any sort of performance hit is run G mode with your N/AC router - run the band in pure mode vs compatible to lower bands, etc.  But if your seeing anywhere need a 100mbit on your powerline you would be well faster than wifi.

 

You can not run 5ghz in G mode?? You could run in A/N - but I find it unlikely you have A devices? So if your asking if the 2.4 running in G/N effects 5 - then no it should not have any effect..

[Stealthy_Singh]

 

There are pretty much unzip run 1 server and one client, etc..  As you can see in the 900Mbps on all tests..  So lets see what you see over your powerline connection.

 

As to dual band -- Yes a dual band router works fine, it has 2 different radios - what I would not do if your worried about any sort of performance hit is run G mode with your N/AC router - run the band in pure mode vs compatible to lower bands, etc.  But if your seeing anywhere need a 100mbit on your powerline you would be well faster than wifi.

 

You can not run 5ghz in G mode?? You could run in A/N - but I find it unlikely you have A devices? So if your asking if the 2.4 running in G/N effects 5 - then no it should not have any effect..

 

Thanks BudMan

 

I can't run the speed tests as the only things connected via the power line is the router and the PC. Other than that everything else is wireless. I haven't used the PC in the loft on powerline for ages I've been tethering my phone wifi connection as that is quicker. I connected it with the powerline today to try what you said but for some reason the powerline adapters can't see each other now. 

 

I did a internet speed test on speedtest.net. Now I know that isn't strictly tell me everything but after 5 tests on each the computer connected via powerline gets on average 6-7 Mbps and my phone and my brothers' phone via wifi get 21-22Mbps. Unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible as I'm no network guru as you can tell) it seems the powerline is a bottleneck. I'll be honest the powerline has been a PITA for a long time. I was just too lazy to do something about it until now. 

 

On a side note I was looking at the linksys EA6900 or the netgear R7000. The only thing I'm not sure about is if it will work with my talktalk tv box. It needs to have an IGMP capable router and apparently not all routers have this as configurable. I can't see anything about this on the documentation for it. But it can filter out or allow multicasting. As far as I can see this is the same thing. Am I right?

[+BudMan MVC]

Well 6-7Mbps would point to a 10mbit connection at best on your powerline adapter.. Which you said was 100/200.. So what does your router show for the connection, what color is the led, etc?

Well sure even wireless G is better than 10mbit connection. If your powerline was working as designed it would be much faster than G at 100mbit. And even faster than most N connections, etc.

I would either get your powerline working, get new ones or sure go wireless total.. Wireless in my opinion is fine for browsing, email on mobile devices but if the box doesn't move then it should be connected with a WIRE!! wireless is shared, and just not a very good medium for moving large chunks of data.

[Stealthy_Singh]

You can see on the image the powerline adapters are rated at 200Mbps but the connection is throttled for some reason. I've tried streaming what I wanted to from my phone via wireless and it worked so I think for my needs the wireless option should work fine. I just wanted to check if the I limit the G connections to the 2.4 band and the n connections to the 5 band would prevent slowdown from any interference. 

 

I don't think the issue is with the powerline adapters I think it's more to do with the house wiring. It's a pretty old house!

[+BudMan MVC]

which one is which here, how are you reading 200 link to what? And the other is only 17, so a full duplex full ###### 10mbit connection

[Stealthy_Singh]

The 200 link one is connected to the PC and I think it shows 200 as that's the one local to the diagnostic tool. And the 17 link one is connected to the modem. When I swap the adapters around I get the same but the remote link speed varies between 10-20 as and when I run the tool. Technically they could link to each other at 200Mbps but they are not. They were plugged into extension cords but I changed that and used the wall sockets but still the same. 

[+BudMan MVC]

so you have this pc -- 200 -- powerline ----- powerline -- 17 --- router.

Well you end up with 17 then, which yeah is crap!

[Stealthy_Singh]

Exactly - you can see my problem. I think I am going to go for the total wireless solution. I think for my needs it will be enough with what I've tested. With dual band I can dedicate one to the streaming (will only be one stream at a time and this is already pretty good providing I'm not downloading anything else) and the other for regular browsing.

[xendrome]

Wireless is going to be 1000% better then those powerline adapters, maybe back in the day when Wireless B was the norm they were good, but always flaky. Get some nice Wireless N equipment and you will be much happier.

[Stealthy_Singh]

I was thinking of actually getting some wireless AC gear and using that on one band for the heavy stuff and leaving guest wifi and the mobiles on the 2.4 band. 

[Aergan]

Wireless is going to be 1000% better then those powerline adapters, maybe back in the day when Wireless B was the norm they were good, but always flaky. Get some nice Wireless N equipment and you will be much happier.

 

Not always, wireless depends on your internal wall composition and / or number of access points. Powerline etc depend greatly on the length and quality of your internal wiring.

 

I use a set of powerline adapters, 2x Belkin 200AV's and a single Edimax 200AV model. In my previous house I could barely get a stable <50% sync ratio over powerline, but I could cover the whole house with two wireless access points @ 2.5Ghz N.

 

This house however, I can get upwards of 85-95% sync rates on my internal wiring now but I'm needing 4 wireless access points to cover the house due to the walls being made of blocks with an extremely high metal content. Somewhat ironic, I'm using powerline to serve one of the access point's for greater coverage.

[+BudMan MVC]

1000% better is clearly a extreme exaggeration to say the least.. ;)

Lets say we agree to disagree, wireless is garbage to moving any amount of data around your network. Its shared for one - if you can limit the pipe to 1 client pulling from wired device ok.

But if your doing wireless to wireless is just plain blows chunks, I don't care if your AC or not.. You automatically /2 the bandwidth, sounds to me like this is wireless to wireless..

@xendrome - you saw my bencmarks of wired connectivity. Lets see your benchmarks from a wireless to wireless connected device.. Can you get 100mbps? I am talking wireless to wireless!!! Not wireless client to something wired to your router, etc. I am talking a device that has your file on it connected via wireless, moved to a device also connected wireless.

Lets see these screaming numbers your always going on about ;)

[Stealthy_Singh]

I agree with you BudMan. Wired would the way to go ideally. And if the wiring in my house wasn't crap then powerline would be second best. I know it's the wiring as I had the bright idea of plugging them into the same extension sockets so bypassing the house wiring completely. Lo and behold I get almost a full 200Mbps! The issue is taking cables through to where they need to go will not be neat and tidy. At the end of the day if it does what we need then that's great. I used wifi analyzer to check the area and no one is using any 5GHz bandwidth anywhere near me on my street so it is virgin territory here!

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

@xendrome - you saw my bencmarks of wired connectivity. Lets see your benchmarks from a wireless to wireless connected device.. Can you get 100mbps? I am talking wireless to wireless!!! Not wireless client to something wired to your router, etc. I am talking a device that has your file on it connected via wireless, moved to a device also connected wireless.

Lets see these screaming numbers your always going on about ;)

In general, in situations like this, bandwidth is only as slow as your bottleneck (regardless of latency) so I don't see why you'd think it would change if another wireless device was added into the mix unless the new device had limited upload/download bandwidth inherently. Wireless AC routers can get pretty good throughput on the 5Ghz spectrum: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/116-5-ghz-updn-c ; note that if you check the uplink and downlink profiles for good devices (like the nighthawk), the simultaneous throughput is more than double that of the individual average throughput of just up and down links alone. This suggests the device itself doesn't have issues with simultaneous throughput over wireless. With that in mind, you should certainly be able get above 100mbps on average in such setups.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I've only got a 150Mbps N router, but even then a wireless to wireless test maxed out at ~40Mbps.

The latency sucked as well.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

I've only got a 150Mbps N router, but even then a wireless to wireless test maxed out at ~40Mbps.

The latency sucked as well.

Yeah, n falls off rapidly even on average even on the 5Ghz spectrum. You really do need a AC router to pull 100mb+ 

[spaceelf]

I need to up to AC myself but theres just too much money involved to bother when my current network 'works.'

 

Maybe soon.

[+BudMan MVC]

"o I don't see why you'd think it would change if another wireless device"

 

What do you not understand about wireless and 1 client talking at a time on wireless? 

 

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/32287-how-much-throughput-can-you-really-get-from-an-ac-router?showall=&start=2

We shouldn't be surprised by these results. Channel capacity (bandwidth) is determined by the Modulation and Coding rate (MCS index) and number of spatial streams in use (see chart). In the case of our test router, the maximum usable throughput was measured at ~ 250 Mbps with a client capable of linking at the router's maximum 1300 Mbps 5 GHz rate. So even if we had all AC1300 (3x3) AC clients, they still would have only 250 Mbps of bandwidth to share.

 

So the answer to the question of how much throughput you can get from an AC router is: no more than the maximum supported by the combination of your router's class and its highest-class client. Adding more clients, even if they support the router's maximum rate, only divides the available throughput among them.

 

And I wasn't really talking about other clients eating up the bandwidth - which they can, try streaming your video over wireless, while client on same band downloads a torrent and see how much fun you have with wireless ;)  Or downloads a linux distro, or watches youtube, etc.  Try playing your game from wireless client while 3 other wireless devices are moving files ;)  Wireless is SHARED and while some of the numbers can look fairly good in the benchmarks..  Do you use your wireless in the same room as your router?  Or are you on the other side of the house?  Do you really have a 3x3 -- is that card in your laptop a 3 stream card?  I find that really unlikely to be honest.

 

What I am talking about is that you instantly /2 if your wireless to wireless -- All of those numbers in those tests are from a wired server..  Do this test between a device connected wireless to another device connected wireless - let me see that 100Mbps your talking about ;)  So take your laptop to 1 room, and take your other laptop to the other room with their what 1 stream wireless cards and run file copy test between them..  Does not matter if your AC router is 4x4 if your clients are only 1 ;)  Your seeing 100Mbps?  I find it really unlikely to be honest.

 

Wireless to wireless on the same band btw - don't go cheating the system with 2.4 wireless to 5 wireless client.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

"o I don't see why you'd think it would change if another wireless device"

 

What do you not understand about wireless and 1 client talking at a time on wireless? 

 

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/32287-how-much-throughput-can-you-really-get-from-an-ac-router?showall=&start=2

We shouldn't be surprised by these results. Channel capacity (bandwidth) is determined by the Modulation and Coding rate (MCS index) and number of spatial streams in use (see chart). In the case of our test router, the maximum usable throughput was measured at ~ 250 Mbps with a client capable of linking at the router's maximum 1300 Mbps 5 GHz rate. So even if we had all AC1300 (3x3) AC clients, they still would have only 250 Mbps of bandwidth to share.

 

So the answer to the question of how much throughput you can get from an AC router is: no more than the maximum supported by the combination of your router's class and its highest-class client. Adding more clients, even if they support the router's maximum rate, only divides the available throughput among them.

 

And I wasn't really talking about other clients eating up the bandwidth - which they can, try streaming your video over wireless, while client on same band downloads a torrent and see how much fun you have with wireless ;)  Or downloads a linux distro, or watches youtube, etc.  Try playing your game from wireless client while 3 other wireless devices are moving files ;)  Wireless is SHARED and while some of the numbers can look fairly good in the benchmarks..  Do you use your wireless in the same room as your router?  Or are you on the other side of the house?  Do you really have a 3x3 -- is that card in your laptop a 3 stream card?  I find that really unlikely to be honest.

 

What I am talking about is that you instantly /2 if your wireless to wireless -- All of those numbers in those tests are from a wired server..  Do this test between a device connected wireless to another device connected wireless - let me see that 100Mbps your talking about ;)  So take your laptop to 1 room, and take your other laptop to the other room with their what 1 stream wireless cards and run file copy test between them..  Does not matter if your AC router is 4x4 if your clients are only 1 ;)  Your seeing 100Mbps?  I find it really unlikely to be honest.

 

Wireless to wireless on the same band btw - don't go cheating the system with 2.4 wireless to 5 wireless client.

We were talking about a scenario with a client acting as a receiver and another acting as a transmitter, not one with a bunch of clients pegging the usable rx bandwidth of the channel. Sure, if you change the situation and have multiple clients tx/rxing and hogging the channel then the effective bandwidth is much lower, but that wasn't the test you mentioned to xendrome. In the original scenario there is no reason not see near peak (channel bandwidth/2) unless either of the two clients are bandwidth limited themselves. I really don't see why you wouldn't believe the bandwidth rates won't exceed 100mbps given that AC routers show average simultaneous throughput much higher than that in testing (400-600mbps, on the same band)*. So in the example you linked, you'll get ~250mbps rx and you have probably around the same for the tx bandwidth (and double for the combined throughput, which should follow the overall channel bandwidth pretty well, i.e. not /2). So if we were to set that up with a receiving client and a transmitting client, you should get something in the ~200-250ish mbps range.

 

Sure, I'd agree with you for wireless n because speeds drop off rapidly with distance, but ac routers have shown that to be much less of an issue. These things are reflected in the averages of the equipment in testing. You won't see mostly any n equipment (except the dark knight) getting over 100mbps on average throughput (and half that when looking at the actual down or up bandwidths).

 

*Note: it is worth noting that these tests aren't contrived, smallnetbuilder does testing at various ranges: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/31542-how-we-test-wireless-products-revison-6 and the throughput/up/down results are the averages over the locations.

[+BudMan MVC]

There are 2 scenarios that can crush wireless bandwidth, yes if your client and server are both wireless that is an automatic /2, now if you have other clients using the bandwidth you remove from the total shared bandwidth available.

Lets take the 250. That is assuming the transmitter is actually transmitting at full speed.. What is your transmit rate, is that 3x3 - what cards laptop cards are you using that are 3x3? What data rate is your client at, AP can only transmit traffic to 1 client at a time be it acks to your sending, or sending traffic to the client.

What I would like to see - do you have AC? Please post a simple test, using iperf, robocopy or whatever tool you would like to use that I can duplicate on a wire to get a comparison.

Wireless to Wireless - what are your speeds.. You can see the speeds I see on wired. Wireless benchmark numbers are great, but I have yet to see one that accurately represents real world usage. I can max out my internet pipe (57mbps wired testing) in a download sure on my wireless N laptop in the morning when nothing else is using it. But if your going to go full wireless, where every device you have is wireless. Your storage with your movies on them, your player of the movies all wireless. And every other tablet, pc, phone all sharing that bandwidth and trying to stream or play games I feel your going to sadly disappointed in the performance in the real world. Unless you drop some serious coin on your AC router and AC cards..

Please anyone reading this thread - post up some actual real world number of your wireless client pulling a file from your wireless server so that the OP can see what kind of bandwidth he can expect in the real world. My point is your don't be surprised when your real world doesn't live up to the numbers presented in benchmarks and marketing.

Wireless is great for surfing, light internet stuff - if you really want to move data around there is nothing like a wire! Plain and Simple ;)

[Stealthy_Singh]

Wow I didn't expect to learn so much from 1 post! And Budman thanks for that link to the smallnetbuilder website. Great resource!