New Router Recommendations (or DD-WRT existing router)

katiklysm · Jul 16, 2014

I am more of a software guy and admittedly know very little about networking- I just haven't kept up on it in the same way I do with peripherals and internals.

I'm currently using a Cisco WRT54G(S) [I don't think this even supports 802.11n, let alone the newer 802.11ac] version 7.2 router (16MB RAM / 2MB Flash), have been using for probably 5 years at this point and have never had problems with it- but I feel like I'm probably missing out on newer tech/firmware.

My goal in upgrading would be to get a faster/rangier(word?) wi-fi signal to my Playstation 4 (boo console guy!). My signal strength to that device is around 60-70% and I'm sure slow as hell. Obviously ethernet would be the way to go- but the PC room and living room are oriented such that I'd have a lot of trip potential with the cord, with a 6 week old baby- not worth it.

So the question is, should I look into installing DD-WRT (or recommend another?) firmware to the device and boost the signal- or buy a new router (and if so, what is a good buy?) Prefer to keep cost < $200 if buying new.

I wouldn't get too much into the networking vpn/gateway/etc. features, so primarily aiming for a good quality router that would deliver great range/speed.

Has router hardware even advanced in the last 5 years, or is it all firmware based?

Edit: I'm on 50mb/s internet. I'm sure PS4 would be drinking from a hose if I gave it all of that- but I'm sure it can do better than the current setup.

bill001g · Jul 16, 2014

DD-wrt is just a different OS. It give lots more options and has some fancy configuration screens but it still uses the same hardware. It has some minor abilities to tweak the hardware settings but generally the more well known manufacture has already optimized the hardware.

You will not get more speed or range just by changing the OS.

A new router will also not actually give you more "range". That word is very misused. If you look at as signal strength at a given distance the legal transmit power of a old 802.11g router and a new 802.11n is exactly the same. So the radio level you would receive would be exactly the same. What is different is how much data you can get inside the signal so at a given signal level you will generally get more data...ie faster connection. This is the part that people are confusing since they are combining how fast the signal with the signal level and saying because it runs faster at a given distance it has more range. The problem is at the extreme limits of the signal both signals will degrade to nothing at about the same point.

To a point the hardware has improved. They now use wider channels which increases the total transmit capacity but it also increases the likelihood a neighbor interferes. They have also started using overlapping transmissions called mimo. This is generally done for speed but in some cases since the chips are detecting the delays between the signals they also can receive a reflected signal better. So you can sometimes get more usable signal when it has bounced around a corner. Be careful the router is only half the equation, if your devices can only run 802.11g the router will not use any of its new features talking to that device

802.11ac only run on 5g only which has less ability to penetrate walls. This means the signal does not go as far in most houses. BUT the signals from neighbors also do not penetrate the outside walls as easy so it may or may not be a better option. In any case your devices must have 802.11ac adapters to use this.

The key to running stuff like dd-wrt is the chipset. Broadcom and atheros are the most common supported chipsets. There are a number of 802.11ac routers you can get under 200 that can run dd-wrt. ASUS tends to be the favorite but if you want cheaper tplink tends to do a good job. Last I looked the top tplink router the archer c7 was under $100. Be careful even though many of the asus and tplink routers support third part firmware all do not, you will find some devices with marvel chipsets and these are much harder to find third party firmware if it is even possible.

Urumiko · Jul 16, 2014

I don't have a PS4 yet but the PS3, the wireless performance was shocking and it was the PS3's fault it was just awfull.
I doubt installing custom router firmware would make much difference.
I did find restricting my access point features like multimode b/g/n operation helped a bit but it was the PS3's fault not the AP.

It looks like the PS4 supports 2.4ghz wireless N as standard so in theory an upgraded access point may benefit but you'd end up swaping the cisco for the likes of a tp link as cutting edge cisco wifi is expensive. id be inclined to assume the PS4 wifi implementation is as sucky as the PS3, and if i was going to spend any money it'd be on an Ethernet based solution.

Have you checked out powerline Ethernet adapters?

katiklysm · Jul 16, 2014

bill001g :

DD-wrt is just a different OS. It give lots more options and has some fancy configuration screens but it still uses the same hardware. It has some minor abilities to tweak the hardware settings but generally the more well known manufacture has already optimized the hardware.

You will not get more speed or range just by changing the OS.

A new router will also not actually give you more "range". That word is very misused. If you look at as signal strength at a given distance the legal transmit power of a old 802.11g router and a new 802.11n is exactly the same. So the radio level you would receive would be exactly the same. What is different is how much data you can get inside the signal so at a given signal level you will generally get more data...ie faster connection. This is the part that people are confusing since they are combining how fast the signal with the signal level and saying because it runs faster at a given distance it has more range. The problem is at the extreme limits of the signal both signals will degrade to nothing at about the same point.

To a point the hardware has improved. They now use wider channels which increases the total transmit capacity but it also increases the likelihood a neighbor interferes. They have also started using overlapping transmissions called mimo. This is generally done for speed but in some cases since the chips are detecting the delays between the signals they also can receive a reflected signal better. So you can sometimes get more usable signal when it has bounced around a corner. Be careful the router is only half the equation, if your devices can only run 802.11g the router will not use any of its new features talking to that device

802.11ac only run on 5g only which has less ability to penetrate walls. This means the signal does not go as far in most houses. BUT the signals from neighbors also do not penetrate the outside walls as easy so it may or may not be a better option. In any case your devices must have 802.11ac adapters to use this.

The key to running stuff like dd-wrt is the chipset. Broadcom and atheros are the most common supported chipsets. There are a number of 802.11ac routers you can get under 200 that can run dd-wrt. ASUS tends to be the favorite but if you want cheaper tplink tends to do a good job. Last I looked the top tplink router the archer c7 was under $100. Be careful even though many of the asus and tplink routers support third part firmware all do not, you will find some devices with marvel chipsets and these are much harder to find third party firmware if it is even possible.

I don't want to paraphrase too much- but it sounds like the distance between router and device is going to be a fixed variable regardless of the router- ie. a new router won't improve range or signal. However at that fixed distance, the communication pipe should be wider for an 802.11n connection with newer hardware than it is on an 802.11g connection, allowing more data/packet to flow through (thereby faster). Does this impact latency, or primarily down/up speeds? Thank you for the well thought out reply.

bill001g · Jul 16, 2014

Mostly the upload/download speeds. The latency is a tricky question. The actual delay due to transmission is some fixed ratio of the speed of light. It is extremely small and any speed difference will be hidden by delays in the application.

What wireless does unlike say ethernet is it detects damaged data and retransmits it. This of course increases the delay based on how much retransmission it must do. So if we assume the same amount of damaged data in both 802.11g and 802.11n the 802.11n should be able to retransmit it quicker and there should be less latency. The problem is that because 802.11n is attempting to pack more data into the signal...especially when it is transmitting 3 overlapping signals your chance for error is much higher so the number of takes errors will likely be higher even though it takes less time to recover from the error.

Pretty much it is going to depend how much interference you get. There are a large number of question you see on this forum where people are complaining about poor first hop ping times and the solution is to go back to 20mhz channels rather than the 40mhz channels. Because there is only 60mhz total bandwidth on the 2.4g and its tough to get 40 without strong interference from neighbors.

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New Router Recommendations (or DD-WRT existing router)

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