[SGVLUG] Recommendations for > 100 MBbs routers

[Matthew Campbell]

I picked up a used Cisco professional router on eBay for about the
same cost as a good Linksys runs new.  For the learning experience
alone it was worth every penny.

Matt
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Matthew Campbell
Storage and Cloud Strategy
Office of the CTO

Kaiser Permanente
99 S. Oakland
Pasadena, CA 91101

626-564-7228 (office)
8-338-7228 (tie-line)
818-314-9897 (mobile phone)
Green Center 3-North, 031W29
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kp.org/thrive


On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 3:54 PM, Claude Felizardo <cafelizardo at gmail.com> wrote:
> The TimeWarner bundle promo ended so the rate went up so I decided to
> give Giggle Fiber a try.  That's giggle with an I, not two O's.  They
> bought out Champion cable in Arcadia/Monrovia so it's fiber to a node
> somewhere in the the neighborhood then coax to your home.  With TWC I
> was getting 80-90 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up, obviously capped for what
> I was paying but we'd get drop outs constantly and the speeds would
> vary so much depending on time of day.  Giggle claims on their web
> site that most users get over 300 and when I talked to them last year,
> they said because they do not offer cable TV and had fewer subscribers
> this meant they had plenty of capacity.
>
> I had the installer pull a brand new cable and run it to my wiring
> closet because I was keeping TWC for TV programming and phone for now
> -- will try asterisk so Paul's talk was timely.
>
> Using Giggle, the upload is hitting 20 Mbps up but down is less than
> TWC at around 50-70 Mbps which is a far cry from 200 Mbps so I was
> disappointed.  Now most of my equipment is 10/100 with cat5 home run
> to a wiring closet where I have the routers installed (TWC and Giggle)
> which can then connect to a switch in the closet then to various drops
> in the house including two with switches because I have more equipment
> at those locations.
>
> I did upgrade one of the switches to a TP-Link SG108E which is an
> 8-port 10/100/1000 smart (web) switch with speed indicator LEDs
> (10/100/1000).  It has a menu option to test the connections and it
> will report cable lengths in meters as well as confirm connection
> speed.  Now the newest router I have is a TP-Link WDR3600 with N600 or
> an older Netgear WNR200 both of which I was using when I still had
> DSL.   Both have 4 gigabit ports but no indicators lights.  Measured
> cable distance from remote switch to closet is 18m which is about what
> I expected.
>
> For testing WiFi, the only AC device we haver is my son's smartphone,
> everything else is G or N speed.  For wired devices, the only thing
> where we could run some kind of speed test was the Xbox One and the
> best speed we saw was 140 Mbs down and that was when we connecting the
> Xbox directly to the modem and cycle power so it will give up an IP.
> Otherwise going through the WDR3600, we're getting usually slower than
> TWC for download but upload is much better which will be good for
> trying to backup to the cloud.
>
> Now when I ordered Giggle Fiber, they suggested I get at least an
> AC1900 router, the installer pretty much said the same.  I could see
> doing that if we had more AC devices but since most of our equipment
> is only N speed, I was hoping that my wired computers would see a nice
> speed increase but I'm wondering if my older router just can't push
> the data fast enough.  Is this really the case?  The TWC rented Arris
> router has 4 gigabit ports and is doing better than the older router.
> I have not tried the WNR2000 yet because the specs say its only
> capable of N300 wireless.
>
> So does anyone have suggestions for replacing my old router?  I may
> need to pick up another gigabit switch for the other room if replacing
> the router makes a difference. And the speeds has seemed to get better
> since the first day - do modems need to be tuned?
>
> Claude
>