Speed Test

[Jeeba Jabba]

I have the Cisco Linksys E2000. Very affordable. Very good.


Never buy Netgear or Belkin...

[DanteJay]

I tried to buy a new Netgear router 4 months ago and the thing was so incredibly terrible I gave up on the idea of a new router.

Never buy Netgear

Ugh, I couldn't disagree with you guys more.

***Warning, long boring rant***
My last two routers purchased are both Wireless N Netgear routers, that have been nothing short of amazing. Dollar for dollar, they have more features (on stock firmwares), and run cooler than many other brands. In fact, I have several Voip lines/gateways at home, a windows 2008 server, 4 PCs, all my game consoles, fax, printer, all running through a $45 Netgear router, which always runs cool and has not given me a single problem since I plugged it in half a year ago. Not a single hick-up. I never even bothered to look for a custom firmware, since the on-board one has a self-updating feature, and does everything i want it to. If I may add, netgear makes some seriously nice commercial rack-mount gear as well.

My friend and I own a small I.T. company which we do the odd installation on the side. Right now our favorite brand of routers for reliability/price would have to be Netgears and Asus. Running the Tomato Firmware on Asus routers is just pure awesomeness. Only thing I don't like about the Asus routers is that they run hot. Solid, but hot.

I used to quite like Linksys routers too when they ran linux code years ago, but then they started cutting corners. But that was before Cisco re-marketed them under Cisco. I don't really have anything against them now except for the high return percentages that we used to get at our local best buys and future shops. Based on that, I've just sort of avoided them the past couple of years.

Now, I would say avoid D-Links like the plague. The reason for my switch to Netgear was because I had several bad experiences with D-Link. No joke, a $50 D-Link router I purchased for my work office went bad after a couple of weeks (kept dropping connections). I had to bring that model back 4 times to best buy (all new in box), as the others came defective out of the box, or failed shortly thereafter. I pulled some strings with management to get a store credit and that's when I purchased my first Netgear. Around that time too my $200 home D-Link router died and my friend's $200 D-Links died twice. So while D-Link was fantastic 10 years ago, now they're just garbage.

/rant

[melancholy]

I agree that the Netgear had a ton of features on the firmware. It actually completely surprised me all the things I could set up. But right now my current 5+ year old router can give me a decent signal at the back of the house and a little signal in my front yard. The $75 Netgear N router I bought 4 months ago couldn't even reach the back of the house. The coverage was spotty all over the house. I didn't drop $75 to upgrade from G to N just to have a worse signal. So after three days, I took it back and gave up on getting a new router.

[Stryfe]

Speedtest's results are a joke at least for me. It shows me having a 1.3 MB download, and a 0.34 upload.

The reality it much worse...

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... time=12.18
- 114Kbps download

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... ime=29.718
- 148Kbps download

These two download speeds accurately reflect the range I'm used to getting, which is about 100-160 Kbps download speeds.

[DanteJay]

I agree that the Netgear had a ton of features on the firmware. It actually completely surprised me all the things I could set up. But right now my current 5+ year old router can give me a decent signal at the back of the house and a little signal in my front yard. The $75 Netgear N router I bought 4 months ago couldn't even reach the back of the house. The coverage was spotty all over the house. I didn't drop $75 to upgrade from G to N just to have a worse signal. So after three days, I took it back and gave up on getting a new router.

Did you try changing any of the wireless channels, or the transmitter power level? It sounds like you may have had some frequency conflicts.

One thing I have always done when purchasing a new router is to update to the latest firmware.

[Jeeba Jabba]

Speedtest's results are a joke at least for me. It shows me having a 1.3 MB download, and a 0.34 upload.

The reality it much worse...

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... time=12.18
- 114Kbps download

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... ime=29.718
- 148Kbps download

These two download speeds accurately reflect the range I'm used to getting, which is about 100-160 Kbps download speeds.

I don't think you understand bandwidth.

[Skynet]

Speedtest's results are a joke at least for me. It shows me having a 1.3 MB download, and a 0.34 upload.

The reality it much worse...

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... time=12.18
- 114Kbps download

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... ime=29.718
- 148Kbps download

These two download speeds accurately reflect the range I'm used to getting, which is about 100-160 Kbps download speeds.

I don't think you understand bandwidth.

I was about to say something similar.

The sad state of broadband in Australia (sorry for bigish pictures):

This was done on my PC



This was done on my phone

[Stryfe]

What, the site doesn't test the 'throughput'?

All I care about is how fast the actual file transfer rate is in pragmatic terms. Unfortunately, I really do live in the sticks, where the only viable option is a 3G USB modem device. In actuality, I'm so far out, all I get is the modem's backwards 2G compatible connectivity.

[Skynet]

The results would be showing you your connection in megabits (Mbps), not megabytes(MB). Divide it by 8 to give you a better idea as to what your speed is. You said 1.3Mb, so 1300 divide by 8 = 162.5KB/s.

http://performance.toast.net/results.as ... ime=29.718
- 148Kbps download

These two download speeds accurately reflect the range I'm used to getting, which is about 100-160 Kbps download speeds.

See, the numbers are around the same. You said between 100-160. The number I gave you was around 160.


In my top picture it says 2.01Mb/s, which is about 250KB/s, which is what I get download speed wise.

[pixel]

I have the Cisco Linksys E2000. Very affordable. Very good.

Agreed. My current roommate bought a Netgear when moving into his first house. When more than four or five devices connected, it'd fuck up and die. His roommates at the time were on the verge of murdering him after so many dropped connections during online tests. The web administration page was atrocious with no available options and poor documentation. Everything was just so, so awful.

When he moved in with me, there was no discussion. I've only ever bought Linksys routers, starting with an older non-wireless around 2003. There was no way his router was being installed. After my first WRT54Gv5 went out, I bought two WRT54GLs for a wireless bridge (using DD-WRT). The time in-between, while using that Netgear, was torture.

[DanteJay]

I have the Cisco Linksys E2000. Very affordable. Very good.

Agreed. My current roommate bought a Netgear when moving into his first house. When more than four or five devices connected, it'd fuck up and die. His roommates at the time were on the verge of murdering him after so many dropped connections during online tests. The web administration page was atrocious with no available options and poor documentation. Everything was just so, so awful.

When he moved in with me, there was no discussion. I've only ever bought Linksys routers, starting with an older non-wireless around 2003. There was no way his router was being installed. After my first WRT54Gv5 went out, I bought two WRT54GLs for a wireless bridge (using DD-WRT). The time in-between, while using that Netgear, was torture.

Any idea what the model name was of the Netgear router? Also, did he update to the latest firmware?

Most of those types of issues are resolved with a simple firmware upgrade. Even my $200 D-Link didn't work properly out of the box. It was dropping connections twice a day. I did a fw upgrade, and that resolved all it's problems. That is, until it prematurely died just after 2 years.

[Stryfe]

Aaahhh... I see.

I was making the newb mistake of using the wrong nomenclature. Kbps (KB/s vs Kbps), or Mbps, refers to bits...

Well when this area gets DSL, or cable, in the next ten years or so, I'll know what to look for.

[mrandyk]

It is a good information about speed test,
In this way i test my internet everyday , because it is useful to know about the uploading and downloading speed, so i check my speed, through this site http://www.scanmyspeed.com
My speed test results are,
upload speed:0.52 kbps
download speed:1.96 kbps
It has the best & accurate results for my internet speed test ,...........

Are you in one of those Middle Eastern countries that just now got dial up internet?

[DanteJay]

It is a good information about speed test,
In this way i test my internet everyday , because it is useful to know about the uploading and downloading speed, so i check my speed, through this site http://www.ImASpammer.com
My speed test results are,
upload speed:0.52 kbps
download speed:1.96 kbps
It has the best & accurate results for my internet speed test ,...........

I can fix your internet speed problems! Just send my your address information, along with your date of birth, and branch number of your local bank. I will deposit funds in the sum of $1,000,000.00 to your bank account. With that money you can buy better internet.

Do not worry about me, I have received billions of dollars from several people who have passed away with no family. I am just happy to help.

[pixel]

I have the Cisco Linksys E2000. Very affordable. Very good.

Agreed. My current roommate bought a Netgear when moving into his first house. When more than four or five devices connected, it'd fuck up and die. His roommates at the time were on the verge of murdering him after so many dropped connections during online tests. The web administration page was atrocious with no available options and poor documentation. Everything was just so, so awful.

When he moved in with me, there was no discussion. I've only ever bought Linksys routers, starting with an older non-wireless around 2003. There was no way his router was being installed. After my first WRT54Gv5 went out, I bought two WRT54GLs for a wireless bridge (using DD-WRT). The time in-between, while using that Netgear, was torture.

Any idea what the model name was of the Netgear router? Also, did he update to the latest firmware?

Most of those types of issues are resolved with a simple firmware upgrade. Even my $200 D-Link didn't work properly out of the box. It was dropping connections twice a day. I did a fw upgrade, and that resolved all it's problems. That is, until it prematurely died just after 2 years.

Yeah, that probably could have fixed some of the issues. But with our current apartment, I need a wireless bridge (two routers, connected on the same subset). Otherwise, I'd have to run a 50+ foot Ethernet cable through two rooms. IRC, that router didn't support DD-WRT and definitely didn't have the default software to support a bridge. All in all, I hope it's in Hell.

[Jeeba Jabba]

I have the Cisco Linksys E2000. Very affordable. Very good.

Agreed. My current roommate bought a Netgear when moving into his first house. When more than four or five devices connected, it'd fuck up and die. His roommates at the time were on the verge of murdering him after so many dropped connections during online tests. The web administration page was atrocious with no available options and poor documentation. Everything was just so, so awful.

When he moved in with me, there was no discussion. I've only ever bought Linksys routers, starting with an older non-wireless around 2003. There was no way his router was being installed. After my first WRT54Gv5 went out, I bought two WRT54GLs for a wireless bridge (using DD-WRT). The time in-between, while using that Netgear, was torture.

Any idea what the model name was of the Netgear router? Also, did he update to the latest firmware?

Most of those types of issues are resolved with a simple firmware upgrade. Even my $200 D-Link didn't work properly out of the box. It was dropping connections twice a day. I did a fw upgrade, and that resolved all it's problems. That is, until it prematurely died just after 2 years.

Yeah, that probably could have fixed some of the issues. But with our current apartment, I need a wireless bridge (two routers, connected on the same subset). Otherwise, I'd have to run a 50+ foot Ethernet cable through two rooms. IRC, that router didn't support DD-WRT and definitely didn't have the default software to support a bridge. All in all, I hope it's in Hell.

It's because Netgear is shit.

[DanteJay]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833124344

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833122320

[melancholy]

Yeah, there's no way in hell I'm going to buy a Linksys 120N. That thing got terrible reviews. I had the opportunity to buy one for $10 and turned it down. I'll probably get the E2500 once I get paid.

[Juan]

[Wagh]

Is that a new connection for you Juan?

Hopefully they will have less connection time outs.

Here's mine from work



I should add that the reason it's so fast is that I'm literally across the street from where the speedtest for ATL is hosted. I'm right at the ATL hub for some 280 different network operators so we get pretty nice speeds.