Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: caldera on January 13, 2012, 08:08:01 PM

Title: Router question
Post by: caldera on January 13, 2012, 08:08:01 PM
Clueless noob question:

I have an Xbox360 and want to watch movies from Netflix.  What kind of router do I need?  My TV is 1080p HD, if that means anything.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: Estes on January 13, 2012, 11:48:40 PM
Depends on if you will be having your xbox hooked up with a cable or wireless. Mine is hooked up with a cable, but I've run it off wireless and it actually did better than I thought. Obviously wired is the better bet, if you have that option. If not, any wireless N router should be fast enough. I have a netgear NG600, which is a bit out of date today, but works great for netflix and everything.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 19, 2012, 06:28:18 PM
Depends on if you will be having your xbox hooked up with a cable or wireless. Mine is hooked up with a cable, but I've run it off wireless and it actually did better than I thought. Obviously wired is the better bet, if you have that option. If not, any wireless N router should be fast enough. I have a netgear NG600, which is a bit out of date today, but works great for netflix and everything.

Realistically, wireless N would be a waste of money for this application.

Most high-speed internet connections these days are roughly 1.5MB/s, wireless G is capable of doing roughly 5.4MB/s.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: 2bighorn on January 19, 2012, 11:25:10 PM
Realistically, wireless N would be a waste of money for this application.

Most high-speed internet connections these days are roughly 1.5MB/s, wireless G is capable of doing roughly 5.4MB/s.

So, you're saying I should drop my gigabit LAN and replace it with 10base2?
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 19, 2012, 11:28:02 PM
So, you're saying I should drop my gigabit LAN and replace it with 10base2?

Absolutely not, not really sure how you even drew that conclusion from what I said.

If he were doing media streaming over his internal network, that would be a completely different story, since the extra bandwidth from N would be utilized.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: 2bighorn on January 19, 2012, 11:46:22 PM
Absolutely not, not really sure how you even drew that conclusion from what I said.

If he were doing media streaming over his internal network, that would be a completely different story, since the extra bandwidth from N would be utilized.

You realize that 54Mbs for G is just nominal peak transfer rate at ideal conditions and that actual sustained throughput (in ideal conditions) is not more than 20Mbs? And that will drop with the distance.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 19, 2012, 11:52:42 PM
You realize that 54Mbs for G is just nominal peak transfer rate at ideal conditions and that actual sustained throughput (in ideal conditions) is not more than 20Mbs? And that will drop with the distance.

Yup, I do.

20Mbps (roughly 2.0MB/s) is still greater than 15Mbps (roughly 1.5MB/s).  You shouldn't see less than 24Mbps unless you are in a location with lots of interference, or at the very edge of the wireless signal.  Even N will struggle with bandwidth at the edge of it's range.

If he wants to splurge on N, that's his prerogative.  I'm not spewing nonsense here.  I run a G network in my house that goes down two stories and have no issues with Netflix, or bandwidth in general.  Still hit 2.0MB/s download (which is max on my internet plan) and game on it without a hitch.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: 2bighorn on January 20, 2012, 12:14:04 AM
Must have been a while you were shopping wireless equipment. In any decent store N routers vastly outnumber G and nowadays they cost about the same.

Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 20, 2012, 12:17:44 AM
Must have been a while you were shopping wireless equipment. In any decent store N routers vastly outnumber G and nowadays they cost about the same.



Could be the case, technology moves fast.

Now if you had simply pointed that out instead of trying to belittle me for trying to save a guy a few bills, you could've saved us both some time.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: 2bighorn on January 20, 2012, 12:26:30 AM
Now if you had simply pointed that out instead of trying to belittle me for trying to save a guy a few bills, you could've saved us both some time.

Well, apologies, I wasn't trying to belittle you. I was just trying to save a guy a few bills.  :salute
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: Infidelz on January 20, 2012, 05:03:01 PM
I have found Netgear to be pretty near effortless to use and of great quality. Netgear Dual Band router at 450Mbps is I would get to stream video if my old one gives out. I have a single band N router from netgear with 75mbps USB adapters. its pushing it which is why I want to expand my bandwidth. 



Infidelz.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: caldera on January 20, 2012, 05:14:41 PM
Ty all for the info.  :salute
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: guncrasher on January 20, 2012, 05:19:19 PM
I just got the netgear n300 have no problems watching movies on netflix using wireless on my tv.  also make sure the yellow cable is connected properly as one side is for the modem and the other for the router.  almost threw the damn thing out the window as I didnt know and couldnt connect  :bhead :bhead :bhead.


semp
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: Rob52240 on January 27, 2012, 02:52:32 PM
Look Folks, the throughput bottleneck in your home network resides @ your modem.  Unless your wireless router is really old.

And I don't want to hear any crap about how this ISP is giving me x bandwidth because nobody utilizes the speeds their ISP advertises.  Getting to use about 10% of the bandwidth you're paying for is still the rule of thumb, unless you're running a bandwidth test.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 29, 2012, 11:30:43 AM
Look Folks, the throughput bottleneck in your home network resides @ your modem.  Unless your wireless router is really old.

And I don't want to hear any crap about how this ISP is giving me x bandwidth because nobody utilizes the speeds their ISP advertises.  Getting to use about 10% of the bandwidth you're paying for is still the rule of thumb, unless you're running a bandwidth test.

I utilize my allocated download bandwidth all the time during downloads.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: Rob52240 on January 30, 2012, 03:27:27 AM
Your service provider must have competition?
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: SectorNine50 on January 30, 2012, 09:16:58 AM
Your service provider must have competition?

In my area, no unfortunately.  We are basically at the whim of Comcast here.  The good news is that the service has been pretty good for the past few years.  Are you sure you aren't confusing Mbps (megabits per second) with MB/s (megabytes per second)?  Advertised speeds for ISPs need to be divided by 8 to be converted to kilobytes/megabytes, which is what our browsers report download speeds at.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: Tigger29 on January 31, 2012, 10:11:12 AM
For the VAST MAJORITY of users (and if you aren't one of them you already know this) internet speeds don't even come close to network adapter speeds.  I see people all the time wanting to upgrade their equipment from 10 to 100 to 1000.. or from B to G to N but the truth of it is that it doesn't really do much.

Even a 20Mbps (Megabit per second) internet connection doesn't even come close to touching the old 10 MB/S (MegaBYTE per second) network standards.  Keep in mind that there are eight bits to a byte which means that internet speed is really only 2.5MB/S (but most likely you'll be using much less anyway).

Now for transferring data from one computer to another in your network is a different story by most people don't even do this much less need the extra speed to do so with.
Title: Re: Router question
Post by: bbosen on January 31, 2012, 03:18:11 PM
...Even a 20Mbps (Megabit per second) internet connection doesn't even come close to touching the old 10 MB/S (MegaBYTE per second) network standards.  Keep in mind that there are eight bits to a byte which means that internet speed is really only 2.5MB/S (but most likely you'll be using much less anyway).

Now for transferring data from one computer to another in your network is a different story by most people don't even do this much less need the extra speed to do so with.

Close. Us old-timers will remember that the "old 10 MB/S" Ethernet was actually 10 MegaBIT/S" (not Bytes). But that doesn't really change Tigger's main point. For the VAST Majority, even the oldest LAN adapter is much faster than their Internet adapter, so buying a faster LAN adapter isn't going to help Internet speeds. But that didn't help my Internet speeds one bit.

In my case I have a huge library of (legally purchased) movies on a shared network server, and I can watch them on any of the TVs or PCs spread all throughout my house. THAT is a situation that benefits greatly from a fast LAN, so I have abandoned all of the oldest, slowest LAN adapters in favor of faster stuff.
 :salute