Looking for a better home router for 1gb Internet. Recommendations pls

TonyTurbo78 · 14 Apr 2022 at 21:20

Hi guys. I've had 1gb Internet from Toob for about 6 months now, speeds are incredible hardwired but on wifi the router they provide as standard is a bit naff. I'm looking for a strong router for gaming that would give me the best speed snd future proofing. Do I need to be looking at Wifi6 routers? Any recommendations?

WJA96 · 15 Apr 2022 at 04:10

There are currently no WiFi cards on sale that will run much over 750Mbps - and that’s on phones, tablets, laptops and PCs.

Most semi-decent ISP routers (BT Hub 2) will do 600Mbps.

I’d be tempted to go for a cheap but good WiFi6 router then go to access points if you dint get the speed you’re looking for.

Huawei AX3 should be available for £30-£50 depending on the offers on at the time and it’s a very good WiFi router for the money.

TonyTurbo78 · 15 Apr 2022 at 20:34

WJA96 said:
There are currently no WiFi cards on sale that will run much over 750Mbps - and that’s on phones, tablets, laptops and PCs.

Most semi-decent ISP routers (BT Hub 2) will do 600Mbps.

I’d be tempted to go for a cheap but good WiFi6 router then go to access points if you dint get the speed you’re looking for.

Huawei AX3 should be available for £30-£50 depending on the offers on at the time and it’s a very good WiFi router for the money.

Thanks for your input. I was looking at the really expensive Asus and TP link gaming routers, but before spending £300 to £400 on it, I wanted to get some advice first

lord filbuster · 15 Apr 2022 at 20:45

TonyTurbo78 said:
Thanks for your input. I was looking at the really expensive Asus and TP link gaming routers, but before spending £300 to £400 on it, I wanted to get some advice first

I briefly used an asus pce-ac88 card, that managed just under 900mbs with hyperoptic's provided router, which isn't that far off what I get hardwired.

I did return it in the end though, it had an annoyingly large 4x4 antenna array. It was also only about 10m away from the router, and not as consistent, hardwired just maxes out at the gigabit. I'd imagine it would fall off pretty sharpish if you had any real distance to the router.

andy_mk3 · 15 Apr 2022 at 20:53

I would advise against a gaming router, they're not good value for money.

My advice is to keep your current router, disable its internal wifi and buy a decent Wifi 6 access point.

TonyTurbo78 · 16 Apr 2022 at 09:31

andy_mk3 said:
I would advise against a gaming router, they're not good value for money.

My advice is to keep your current router, disable its internal wifi and buy a decent Wifi 6 access point.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of this route. I'll look into that today

WJA96 · 16 Apr 2022 at 11:44

lord filbuster said:
I briefly used an asus pce-ac88 card, that managed just under 900mbs with hyperoptic's provided router, which isn't that far off what I get hardwired.

Do you mind if I ask how this was measured? And what WLAN device it was communicating with because to get those speeds would genuinely be exceptional. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just exceptional.

lord filbuster · 16 Apr 2022 at 16:07

WJA96 said:
Do you mind if I ask how this was measured? And what WLAN device it was communicating with because to get those speeds would genuinely be exceptional. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just exceptional.

Yeah, I normally use nperf.com, but it was more or less the same using other sites. I use hyperoptic's provided router, which is a Nokia HA-140W-B. They card and router are both 4x4 mimo, and probably less than 10 meters away. No way you are getting anything close to that otherwise I suspect.

The aerial placement didn't seem to matter too much, even just chucked on the floor somewhere behind the PC I never saw less than 750, which is still ridiculously good. The only downside is that the aerial was quite large, and only had about 40cm of cable to reach the PCI card, so it's really hard to find somewhere convienient for it.

The throughput was the main reason I bought it tbh, quite a few other people were getting near gigabit over the 5ghz band. Not bad for £60.
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8133/asus-pce-ac88-ac3100-wireless-pcie-adapter-review/index.html
https://www.blacktubi.com/review/asus-pce-ac88-review/

There's also plenty of people getting 5-600mbps in less ideal conditions, which is more toward what I was expecting, I was really suprised how good it was.

kefan77 · 16 Apr 2022 at 17:57

What floor area are you covering? You might need mesh instead of a single unit. Also, you have to have all your equipment/devices upgraded to wifi6 to see those speeds. I had to swap wifi for intel ax200 in my laptop. 900 mbps is perfectly achievable, but goes down rather quickly with distance and walls.
Oh and just forget about any of those 30 40 50 quid routers.

WJA96 · 16 Apr 2022 at 19:28

kefan77 said:
What floor area are you covering? You might need mesh instead of a single unit. Also, you have to have all your equipment/devices upgraded to wifi6 to see those speeds. I had to swap wifi for intel ax200 in my laptop. 900 mbps is perfectly achievable, but goes down rather quickly with distance and walls.
Oh and just forget about any of those 30 40 50 quid routers.

Apparently, they were getting those speeds on an AC setup. Which is quite literally amazing. If you look in the Tweak Town review they were getting more than 1 GbE which is as good as if not better than most AX setups.

And I’ll back that £30 AX-3 against pretty much any AX router on the market. It’s a serious bargain. If Huawei weren’t the bad-boy of the Eastern world it would be significantly more expensive.

thewanted · 16 Apr 2022 at 19:36

I couldn’t find a way to set custom DNS servers on the AX3 so I returned it

Did seem like a nice piece of kit even though I had no intention of using it for Wi-Fi.

Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one · 17 Apr 2022 at 00:34

I have BT FTTP 900. I am using the supplied Smart Hub 2 and have 2 additional discs.

Wired I’m getting 900-1.9 down and 150 up.
I have a iPhone 12 Pro Max, if I’m in the same room as my router I get 650 max down and 150 up.

I did try a set of Tp Link Deco x20’s and it was slower.

Best change I did was change dns on each device to 1.1.1.1

sandys · 17 Apr 2022 at 01:30

WJA96 said:
There are currently no WiFi cards on sale that will run much over 750Mbps - and that’s on phones, tablets, laptops and PCs.

I have a few cards that'll do over 750Mb over Wifi via my ax3s? Only really works within a couple of metres though, this is with wifi 5 160 and wifi 6.

only on Win10 though as if the drivers from Intel on Win 11 for Wifi is a bit pants.

WJA96 · 17 Apr 2022 at 05:43

I really want to know how people are measuring these numbers, because AX 2x2 and AC 4x4 will not run that fast.

The company I work for uses a company in Cheltenham to do our testing (we advise people on WLAN and have to give written guarantees on the expected speeds) and we have alpha, beta and release devices to play with and nothing in my release list will do nPerf between two local endpoints over 750Mbps, AX or AC.

sandys · 17 Apr 2022 at 12:02

nperf and actual transfers for me, they really do run that fast.

I did post some in here on 80 and 160 width, you can see the difference. 112MB/s on 160 AC nevermind AX basically as fast as the slow ass Gb LAN port can supply the WAP.

scroll down for 160 results.

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