BT FTTP - BT Smart hub 2 vs netgear/asus wifi 6 router

hardyxd

hardyxd

hardyxd

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11 Jul 2011
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North Notts
Good Morning

I've just ordered BT fibre 900 its going live monday(have 300 at the minute) I have a smart hub 2 arriving tomorrow.
Has anyone who has already upgraded to fibre 500/900 tested on smart hub 2 vs a wifi 6 router? (netgear rax40 / asus rt-ax58u or better) have an improved ping over the bt hubs?

At the minute I have BT smart hub 1.0 with 3000mbps wifi 6 PCI-e adapter in my pc which is pinging the router at <1ms and I'm pinging google at 6-8ms which is the same as wired, no difference vs wired for me now AX is here. Would OFDMA / other jargon technology they sell on gaming routers actually improve my ping against a very good start place already?

Is the upgrade worth it for me to spend £170 to have a better online gaming experience?

There is one way to test it buy and return to amazon, but if anyone has tried it already and could advise me would be great.
 
Your best upgrade if you are seeking the best online gaming experience will be to cable your PC to the router. No wireless connection can be completely free from interference, instances of packet loss etc.
 
It's no upgrade in my case I have tested it. I understand what you are saying but in this case it's the same. I'm only a few meters from the router but don't want to run a cable through the kitchen. Wifi 6 is not as bad as everyone thinks.
 
It’s a crap-shoot. What you have at the moment does what it does. Your AX WLAN PCIe card will not be running in AX mode because it needs AX at both ends to unlock all the goodness of that and the Smart Hub 1 is 4x4 on 5GHz, so it might be running 2x2 at the moment depending on what else is on the network (the Smart Hub runs are the speed of the slowest client attaching). This is what OFDMA fixes.

And you’re always going to be bottlenecked by the slowest component, which is probably going to be your WiFi if you get 900Mbps WAN. Bear in mind that the whole 3000Mbps thing is marketing nonsense. First, it’s half-duplex, so you need to halve than number for transmission rates, and then they add all the possible signals together so you’re probably only going to see 750-850Mbps if you sit in just the right place so you’re bang-on the waveform peak.

So if you go AX you might see better transfer speeds because it can run 4x4 even with slower clients attaching as well. But the increased processing might drop the pings, which are apparently very important to you.

As has been repeated ad nauseam, nothing beats a cable for consistent performance. That’s ALWAYS the best option. And it will ALWAYS run at 1Gbps.

With WLAN You might see improvements in one area but lose out in others. I think you’re going to have to spend the money, but at least you can send an AX router back if you don’t see any benefit.

And given how new AX still is, I would probably advise going with the same brand router as your WLAN card, to get the best implied compatibility.
 
Ok thanks for the replied everyone, I have just settled for plugging the cable in the evening. Since when the kids are awake don't get much chance to play in the day. dad problems.
 
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