Adsl Router with USB and good range, between 1- 3.5k

Party Monger

Party Monger

Skilled
I want a hassle free router with inbuilt modem. The range should be good. I need a usb port for attaching media. If it has a downloader inbuilt that would be a great addon.

But mostly I need solid core functionality with USB and no hassle. Any other frills are a bonus.

Budget is 1000- Rs. 3500/- Might stretch it if the router is really good or a bit future proof like with AC standards.


Ps- Had ordered a TP-Link TD-W8968 but it was very glitchy with connection drops and a lousy and often unresponsive web interface. Even ftp downloads over the internet were timing out. So initiated a return on Amazon within 5hours of getting it.
 
Party Monger said:
The range should be good.
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How many wall in between your clients and the router. How thick are they (inches).

range comes after, walls kill range, number of walls dictates what you are likely to have or whether you can achieve what you want within your budget to begin with.

As a benchmark how good was that tplink in terms of range ?

if it was glitchy try reflashing latest firmware.
 
blr_p said:
How many wall in between your clients and the router. How thick are they (inches).

range comes after, walls kill range, number of walls dictates what you are likely to have or whether you can achieve what you want within your budget to begin with.

As a benchmark how good was that tplink in terms of range ?

if it was glitchy try reflashing latest firmware.
Click to expand...
Few walls. The current placing is keeping in mind optimal wifi position. So at most important use places (Even floors above or below there are maximum one or two walls.) Its placed in dead centre of the building, 2 feet above ground.

Tplink's range was good. Got all bars one floor directly below the router on my laptop. Using the wifi analyzer on android it was half of what i got beside the router.

That tplink router has consistent issues it was mentioned in reviews too. I think it just severely lags which causes timeouts. The firmware that came was latest out of the box. Already initiated return so lets skip this one :p
 
One wall means you have options, two walls becomes harder and you did not mention how thick each wall is. signal received on the floor directly above or below the router is trivial with a basic router, move a little further away and things change.

If you found the tplink good then it gives an idea of the power you require. Do you really need AC ? any clients with it. AC is good if you're in the same room or at most one wall otherwise the speed will drop.

How stable is your internet connection ? post a grab of the stats page from your current modem.

downloading if you can attach a laptop it becomes easier. otherwise the options offered are basic. if that isn't good enough then you need custom firmware on the router which reduces the selection. will have a learning curve too.

3 possibilities as to where the intelligence will be. the router, something like a pi or on the hard drive itself. The last option was popular some time ago, then the router became fashionable. the pi or similar is the most flexible, you don't care how sophisticated the router. It does just one thing.
 
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The area horizontally is small around 800sqft. and the router being placed in the middle also helps. The there are 3 floors. Placed on the second floor, in the middle, elevated 2ft above ground. The primary objective is to get the signal on floor 1,2,3. If then it can reach terrace and parking, thats a bonus. I check with the TPlink I returned today, and it did cover the said areas decently.

Phones connecting are - 7, Laptops and PCs- 4 (2 currently). Of these most have basic usage like whatsapp, that too very little. Only two primary heavy use devices. HAve ordered an Android TV stick (MK808B Plus- http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box/pp_124593.html) Will get it in 15 days. Have ordered a usb to ethernet for this so that it can access file reliably with no wifi in between.

The plan is BSNL 1mbps unlimited. Its fairly stable. The issue was in the tplink router, as putting the old one back made it work properly.

I dont need AC, but assuming router will last 5 years, I would be good to have AC. Not that I need it right now. I think some of the phones in the house have AC.

Yes I get the intelligence part. I have the android device that will probably run as a server. But if the Router has USB, it just becomes simple-er in the sense that I attach a hub to it, and any one can plug their pendrive into the hub for network access. Including access on the Android stick which will be attached to the TV. Now both of them will be at the same place(router and stick) just that the router will help me copy stuff on the go. (ftp server on the android stick will be dodgy. Damn thing is coming from halfway around the world, cant risk a harddrive connected to it.)

Oh and one of my important uses will be a video library that I need to finish watching over the next two months. I checked yesterday, AVplayer hd on my ipad copied files over from the router connected pendrive with ease over ftp. So that's what really convinced me I need it :p Plus will use it for automating backup across computers.(5-10gb of data that needs to be backed up alternate days. Same data, just edited every day. Mostly office files)
 
I want a hassle free router with inbuilt modem.
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^
The plan is BSNL 1mbps unlimited. Its fairly stable
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i want to see how stable and whether that can be improved or not. The stats page will tell me that.

mention the modem you are using currently with revision number too.
 
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Got the Dlink DSL-2750U for Rs. 2000/-

Whats great is that it has an ftp client and a usb port, and I'm using my VPS to push files through the ftp client directly into a drive hooked up to it. Its brilliant :D
For now i'm using my IP address, but I am wondering if I should use the inbuilt dynamic dns client. Have no clue how to use it.

Here is the stats page. There was a hailstorm on sunday and the connection has been a bit bad since then, have already complained.

modem.PNG
 
Party Monger said:
Got the Dlink DSL-2750U for Rs. 2000/-
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Which revision is it ? should say in the top right of the config page or look at the model number ?

Here is the stats page. There was a hailstorm on sunday and the connection has been a bit bad since then, have already complained.
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They're very good, there should not be any problems with numbers like that. This is not a fairly stable, it is very stable.
 
Want a confirmation on what chipset it is. Telnet in with the cmd line.

then type sh

then cat /proc/cpuinfo

and paste the output from the cmd line here.
 
Here is the Output -
TBS>>sh
~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : RTL8676S
processor : 0
cpu model : 56321
BogoMIPS : 448.92
tlb_entries : 64
mips16 implemented : yes
​
 
right, they've moved from broadcom to realtek ...:grumpy:

I dont need AC, but assuming router will last 5 years
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around 2 years for the modem, a broadcom would push it to 3. Assuming its on 24x7.

if wifi is on all the time then 3-5 years. Once the modem becomes weaker you'll have to replace it or you could get a separate modem and still use wifi.

The primary objective is to get the signal on floor 1,2,3. If then it can reach terrace and parking, thats a bonus. I check with the TPlink I returned today, and it did cover the said areas decently.
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That's good because reaching directly above or below is the easy bit, trying to get a room across above or lower is harder.

How is this dlink comparing with the earlier tp-link for range ?
 
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blr_p said:
right, they've moved from broadcom to realtek ...:grumpy:


around 2 years for the modem, a broadcom would push it to 3. Assuming its on 24x7.

if wifi is on all the time then 3-5 years. Once the modem becomes weaker you'll have to replace it or you could get a separate modem and still use wifi.


That's good because reaching directly above or below is the easy bit, trying to get a room across above or lower is harder.

How is this dlink comparing with the earlier tp-link for range ?
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Its better than TP link by around 20%. TP link didnt reach the terrace and parking. This one does.
 
The area horizontally is small around 800sqft. and the router being placed in the middle also helps.
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So that's a rough ball park figure.

TP link didnt reach the terrace and parking. This one does.
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terrace means its going through two floors. parking i suppose is one wall and space. Interesting it gets further because i'd have thought antennas were the same as well as transmission power. The chipsets most likely are the same too.

I know people that have this model, they got its predecessor free from airtel. It covers 75% of the house. placed in one corner, it gets across one wall to rooms adjacent and the one floor above. But it won't make it to the rooms beyond. So two walls is out. Turns out their seating area happens to fall in the coverage.

Had they placed it more centrally they would have been able to cover more area. It was not an option, they are not too bothered.
 
I made sure of the router position when the house was just on paper :p

I have one problem right now with the router. It doesnt support UTF character set in FTP, that or it cant have very long file names. So the names appeared garbled. Havent found a solution for that, and the firmware on the website has an update but they dont have it sorted by harware revision, so im not sure I want to take the risk. Whatever I've seen of these guys, the hardware aside, most of the service is clueless.
 
I initiated return of this router since the inbuilt server of the router keeps hanging. The web interface wont work and neither the wifi. While the client on lan was sometimes able to do it when wifi was not. Its a hot mess. Randomly I discovered devices had problem connecting to the wifi network.

Any suggestions for a new Router+ Modem?
Preferably ASAP.
 
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Sure its the router and not a busy wifi neighbourhood ?

router modem. you tried the dlink & tp-link. what else is left ? the linksys ones.
 
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