A New Badass Router, What A Difference

Guilty to an extent where computer stuff is concerned. I don't sit there drooling about how beautiful they look, like Frank does though, just about what you can do with them and the faster the better, Cant stand smart phones or tablets though.

The fact that he bought a router vrs a switch suggests otherwise.

About 2 months ago I bought a Linksys $200 router that made all those claims. I was replacing a 3 year old N300. I liked it at first - until my wifi would drop out once per night - even at full strength. Our Netflix or Amazon movies more often than not would freeze up and lose connection.

Trash.

I got this Nighthawk about 3 weeks ago now and so far it's been perfect. No dropouts, no freeze ups - we have probably 4 or 5 devices hooked through the 5G (my 11 year old is a gamer).

The Nighthawk is a keeper. Worth the $200.

So far all good, took it out of it's box, screwed in the 3 large antennas plugged it in, Lan lead connected to the computer (also connected it to a vonage box via lan) so I opened up a webpage and it was the setup page, so sixty seconds and done, a breeze to setup. You use a unique password that is on the underside of the router though I expect you can change it if you wish. I had to unplug the lan lead from my vonage box and re-plug it in and then it came up and the phone was active again.

This is a 1 gig processor simultaneous dual band except that (unlike my old netgear 89 buck one) when you look for the wireless networks you no longer have a 5 and a 2.4 to choose from, just the one (at least on my laptop) I suspect the router decides the best connection band. Smart.

Doing a speedtest as soon as I connected the laptop to it, it was initially, 49 megs per second, a lot better than the below 30 I had with the old one. It later crept up to 54 per second. It made a significant difference to my surfing speeds, considerably faster, and streaming was much smoother. The Lan connected computer showed a considerable speed performance improvement too. The bars on the wireless connection were maxed out. You just feel it's a really solid connection.

As for the other higher models, I think if you were and avid gamer you might pay the extra 60 bucks for the higher speed and connection band protocol , To me, what I bought was fantastic. Oh, did I mention it's shut in a closet too.

Edit: It will be connected to a smart tv, a roku box, direct tv's box, a mac laptop, pc and pc laptop. not to mention a smart phone and a tablet or two.

Don't know about these all in ones. Does the router side broadcast at the 5 or 2.4 band or both and you get the choice to connect to either (2 wireless connections show up)

It is possible I think to turn off the router side of your all in one, then you can buy any router you like. As for the net going down, difficult to tell, my cable connection would go out every couple of weeks for half an hour to an hour, usually after midnight. BT, what they using? If it's the copper wire phone network then I'm not suprised. I now am fortunate to have fibre optic. Very reliable.

Good price, I paid $189.00 (for that same model) in Office Depot.,Good question, don't know much about this extra feature. Suggest you google that to find out the reality. For streaming mine is excellent and You can go into the routers settings online and set it as either optimized for streaming or gaming which gives more priority to uploading. You can mess with the channels of both the 2.4 and the 5.

I'm having a little problem with the 5 gightz connection (drops out after a couple of weeks and requires a reset (or a power outage) to make connectivity come back) but funnily enough I don't think it's the Router itself, I say that because it happened to me with my previous symltaneous dual band router. I think I have tracked it down to the Roku wireless remote being the culprit, somehow interfering, it is a wireless remote, rather like a wireless router in itself. Needs more investigation.

Anyway, Overall I notice an improvement in the wired connection and the wireless works well for streaming on both the 2.4 and 5 band. Of course your internet service and connection speed/reliability are an important factor too. Bars are more consistantly solid on this new router and suspect the range/distance has improved though have not really tested that.

Also will shortly be plugging in 2 old printers into the router to print wirelessly, also turns them into airprint, good little bonus feature.

Oh yes, I have to clarify that you do have to make the choice to connect to either the 5 or the 2.4. Both show up as available networks. Rule of thumb, 2.4 works better through walls and over a longer distance than the 5 band. Thats it's failing. 2.4 is still always the most consistent connection band to date.

An Access point is a way of connecting to a wired network. or to other peoples devices. A router just transmits a wireless signal (something like that, shoot me down Seasoned). I'm no expert but to have enough bandwidth and speed to allow everyone to be able to stream Netflix would be expensive. You just cant do it with with a standard connection coming into your location. Hotel net connections are often slow and streaming even low grade video can be a problem. Thats why you get muti-room tv service and on demand video.

A lot of people have smart phones and 4 g speed. accounts, perhaps offer ways to connect them to your existing tv's