Changing BT Home Hub/Time Capsule for a VR900? Edit - it's going back, need alternative suggestions.

Feek

Feek

Feek

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Hey folks.

I've got Infinity 2 and a Home Hub 5 with an Apple Time Capsule 4th generation which is obviously a few years old now.

I'm considering swapping the two devices for a single TP-Link Archer VR900 which I think is this one along with an external USB3 enclosure and a 4Tb hard drive for time machine backups.

I've got quite a lot of WiFi devices around the house, my plan is for everything to be on 2.4GHz and probably just my own iPhone 6S+ on 5GHz.

Assuming decent signal strengths, am I likely to notice any improvements to my wireless throughput and just generally, is this a better solution than the home hub and time capsule. At the moment, all my wireless devices connect via the time capsule. It also means I can lose the silly BT public hotspot stuff.

Opinions please?

Thanks.
 
a bit of a overkill for 2.4Ghz devices. you can get N route/modem does exactly what you want and probably half the price.

if you going for VR900 most of your devices should be on 5Ghz only some 2.4Ghz as well as needing fast wifi backing up or transfer. I don't know what time capsule does but if it is not the kind of thing that needs 250mpbs-400mbps speed then it is overkill

but this router/modem is very very good! i am using it right now and had it for a few days so far. my AC speed effectively doubled and i got rip off 2 plugs - media pc which was running DLAN server and a fibre modem. :)
 
Thanks for the reply.
The idea is to keep my phone (actually probably Mrs. Feek's phone and YMF's phone as well) separate from anything which might slow it down. Hence why I'll limit the things which connect via 5GHz. The time capsule has 5GHz, I don't want to take a step backwards.
 
i don;t think a couple of 5GHz device will slow it down. I have multiple 5GHz devices such as phones PC and laptop running at the same time and a lot of times right next to each other. when i tested the wifi data transfer speed it didn't show any drops or rather any changes...

the router has MIMO which is fully capable of handling multi devices on the same or different bandwidth

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/review/modem-routers/tp-link-archer-vr900-review-3625814/
 
Sounds good, thank you. Obviously I can experiment with different devices on whichever network to see how it goes.

Bottom line though is that this is a decent choice? I've now seen a number of reviews and they're all favourable so I was after some real-world feedback on the VR900.
 
Don't try and manage which devices use which wireless frequencies, let them decide whether to join 2.4 or 5 GHz bands. If you need to maintain performance for certain devices or services then use the QoS rules in the router.

You can also massively improve performance of your network by removing old wireless devices from it entirely - so things like a PS3 with an 802.11g wireless card can be converted to Powerline or connected via a cable.
 
Feek said:
Sounds good, thank you. Obviously I can experiment with different devices on whichever network to see how it goes.

Bottom line though is that this is a decent choice? I've now seen a number of reviews and they're all favourable so I was after some real-world feedback on the VR900.
Click to expand...
I had to restart the router today as I am still testing it's functionality.

Basically I am using it as a media server as well as a storage server. Atm I am trying to download torrent to the USB that's hooked into the router. It works fine. But the media server become out of action during torrent download as it is indexing the download files. Also I somehow managed to hang the router when 2 torrents were near completion. Which are all writing to the USB disk remotely. So it was going through some paces.

Lesson learned, don't download torrent directly to the USB hooked to the router as it's a lot more hassle. Much quicker to download to scratch disk on PC and dump it to USB over WiFi or wired PC. That way media server doesn't become out of action.

WiFi speed is still exceptionally fast and VDSL connection is solid. Not missed a beat. The downstream bandwidth is shown as 96mbits and 56mbit for up as I paid only 36down so I was getting excited in seeing those figures. But I guess openreach ain't stupid. :)

Last thing, I haven't tested this point thoroughly yet, but I think the media server does transcoding. Some of the media files on the USB - films were encoded with codex that my 5 year old Panasonic TV cannot decode. But some play straight away from TV now. I haven't tested everything so can't be sure. But if it's true, it's a great bonus
 
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Again, thanks everyone, that's very welcome info.

I'm not planning on using the attached drive as a media centre but I have two options which I hope it can support.

I'd like to either use it for Time Machine backups or simply mount it as an external drive on my Mac and use it for a nightly full backup. Does anyone know if it'll support the external drive being partitioned as GUID and being formatted for the Mac?
 
You should be able to Google that. But I think it only supports windows file system. But Mac supports NTFS?

Use the router as a backup media is basically what I was testing but with torrents. Ya it will work flawlessly. It has 2 USB slots so both can take external drives. Not sure a USB hub will work in terms of expansion.
 
I've emailed their support.

For both Time Machine backups and if I were to clone, NTFS is no good.

However I'm tempted to buy the router by itself and experiment with the external drive using an existing USB2 caddy and smaller drive to see if it'll do what I want. If not, it's not the end of the world. I want to replace the home hub anyway so I could just disable all the wireless on the existing time capsule and continue to use it for backups.
 
pc-guy said:
The downstream bandwidth is shown as 96mbits and 56mbit for up as I paid only 36down so I was getting excited in seeing those figures. But I guess openreach ain't stupid. :)
Click to expand...
Is that the speeds at which the router has synced? What actual speed are you getting, just the 36 you pay for or higher?
 
This is going back. The QoS is useless, it's just by device and not traffic type. The whole interface is clunky and doesn't give me enough detail, even in advanced mode. I can't even see an uptime figure.

I've been playing with it all weekend but I just don't like it.

Bledd - what's the Synology model you mean?

Or any alternative suggestions?
 
RT1900AC

I've not used one, but I've used a lot of Synology NAS devices. Check out a few reviews, it looks like a decent all-in-one device.



Personally I use a Ubiquti Edgerouter Lite, but that means buying a switch, access point and NAS drive. = £75 + £20-100 + £40-150 + £100-£350.


It's a fairly new product, but they are active with the updates to it.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/releaseNote/RT1900ac
 
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It looks a decent router but with no VDSL capabilities, I'd be back to using two boxes.

/me heads off to the internet to investigate VDSL routers. I can live without any kind of NAS, I just want a damn good router!

/edit - Netgear D7000-100UKS Nighthawk AC1900 maybe?
 
Draytek / Billion. ££, but good.


I was in the same predicament, decided there wasn't an all-in-one solution that would fit my needs.
 
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