Wireless Router - The Best?

[Groucho]

Which wireless router (not ADSL) is the absolute best for a MultiMax wireless installation...?

I guess this is a question targeted at Erolz and Kbasat....

[mickhm]

When I had mine installed I purchased a router from Multimax direct (about 90Tl) it was cheaper than elsewhere and the guys brought it along with them to install

[erol]

Which wireless router (not ADSL) is the absolute best for a MultiMax wireless installation...?

I guess this is a question targeted at Erolz and Kbasat....

Not an easy question really. Firstly best is quite a wide ranging term. Best for value ? Best for range ? Best for speed / throughput ? Best for features ?

Secondly its not really a case of 'best for multimax'. Routers will work the same with any internet connection of the right type for a given router (adsl router for adsl connections etc). What does matter for a router that is specific to mulitmax is how it is configured but thats true of all routers, good and bad. There are different ways to configure such devices to work with multimax wireless internet and some ways are more optimal than others.

In terms of the best wifi functionality of such devices there are a range of standards. However it is worth noting that a wifi link is only as good as the device at each end of the link. That is you can have the latest super dooper wifi router but if the devices you are attaching to it only support older and slower standards then you will not get the full benefit of your super dooper router's wifi abilites.

The latest wifi standard is 802.11ac - this is a very new standard and very few devices (laptops, mobile phones, tablets etc) support this with their built in wifi. 802.11ac wireless routers work in both the 5ghz and 2.4ghz bands. Potentialy a 802.11ac router offers the 'best' speeds possible but does require you to have 802.11ac wifi in the devices you connect to it to get the most from it.

Next down in the list of standards would be 802.11n dual band routers. These also work in 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands.

Then you have 802.11n single band. Typically these work in just 2.4ghz band.

So if you looks at this list of wifi routers sorted by price from highest to lowest here
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productli ... =priceDesc

The top most expensive is the 802.11ac router. Then you get the 802.11n dual band routers. The you get the 802.11n single band routers.

Sorry I could not just give you as simple name of a specific router and say 'this is the best one for a multimax wireless internet connection'

[Groucho]

How do I make sure it's not suitable only for ADSL input connections....? They don't all appear to state clearly that they are/aren't...

e.g. Given a 5mbit wireless input from Multimax, which of the following would be suitable?

TP-Link Dual Band N900 Concurrent Gigabit Router
TP-Link 450Mbps N750 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router
TP-Link Dual Band N600 Concurrent Wireless Router
TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N Gigabit Router TL-WR1043ND

[erol]

How do I make sure it's not suitable only for ADSL input connections....? They don't all appear to state clearly that they are/aren't...

e.g. Given a 5mbit wireless input from Multimax, which of the following would be suitable?

TP-Link Dual Band N900 Concurrent Gigabit Router
TP-Link 450Mbps N750 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router
TP-Link Dual Band N600 Concurrent Wireless Router
TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N Gigabit Router TL-WR1043ND

The list I linked too are all 'not ADSL' routers. If you look at the categories on the left of that linked page there is a seperate section for ADSL routers. Just one note however is that you can use an ADSL router with a multimax wireless internet connection and reason being is that actually you do not need the router functionality in these dvices, as the multimax box on your roof already had that. All you actualy need is the wifi access point and switch capabilites of these boxes. So ADSL or non ADSL routers (usualy called cable routers in the UK) will work fine with mulitmax wireless connection.

As to which from the list above any will be sufficent with regards to getting you 5mbs internet connection to a given device. Where you might want a more expnsive one is if you have two devices connected to the router, say two laptops and you then want to move a file from one laptop to the other. In this senario the more expensive and faster routers will potentialy move that file quicker. But for just plain internet access even the slowest on the list above is much faster than your 5mbs internet connection and os is sufficent.

Hope that makes sense.

[Groucho]

Yes it does thanks....