[aklug] Re: New NETGEAR R6300v2 AC 1750 Router

From: Jeremy Austin <jhaustin@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Oct 02 2013 - 11:47:44 AKDT

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Arthur Corliss
<acorliss@nevaeh-linux.org>wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Oct 2013, Jeremy Austin wrote:
>
> One reason to get routers to market is that they will may have a longer
>> installed life. Clients come and go, but I only replace my routers when
>> they break or a new technology comes along. Ideally.
>>
>
> No doubt, but look at how long 802.11n's been around. I have yet to come
> across a client that actually does 3x3 MIMO. Either the WAP/router
> manufacturers are exceedingly optimistic about the future of technology on
> the client, or they're adding in that capability nominally as a marketing
> ploy: we *can* do this, but in reality you'll never get the chance to use
> it. They can compete with other companies as to who's the fastest when
> pragamatic reality dictates that they're all equally slower because of the
> client.

Good point; I was forgetting that 3x3 MIMO existed in the 802.11n era. I
think I only ever bought one 3x3 AP, and you're right, I've never seen a
3x3 client. Hard to do that in a laptop, and desktops… I shudder to think
of the monstrosity such a PCI-E card might be.

>
>
> I haven't seen any 802.11ac clients yet, but I have tested and installed
>> some Apple and Netgear APs, and for add-on NICs I've started to stock
>> 802.11ac.
>>
>
> PCMCIA, or PCIe? What kind of specs do they have?

I tell a lie. I haven't actually ordered any now that I look in my email,
just APs. I was thinking USB, though, as few laptops have upgradable
mini-PCI cards these days. I still have a few of those. Haven't seen PCMCIA
in a coon's age, though. Might as well toss what I have left.

>
> In a busy environment, features like the beam forming and extra antennas
>> are really going to pay off. It will matter less whether any single client
>> supports the full bandwidth of the router; in fact, some installations may
>> not want that! I think of it as backbone. Not a perfect analogy to copper
>> or fiber, as it really is a shared medium. But it's great to see the
>> continuing engineering that's going into wireless; from one polarity to
>> two, from two to spin, wider channels, higher modulation formats and
>> framing.
>>
>
> In my case, I only upgraded off of 2.4GHz 802.11g because a) I have a ton
> of
> interfering neighboring WAPs, and b) doing backups over wireless was
> beginning to become exceedingly painful without the extra bandwidth.
> Single
> client throughput was a big deal for me.

Good points. There was a big jump from g to n in real-world usability. I
was less impressed by the jump from b to g; also the g era was fairly
short. I think I started installing 2.4 back in the tail end of the b days,
but we had many b clients to support for a few more years. All gone now.

So far I've been happy with n for backups, because I do mine offsite over
DSL, where the DSL is the limiting factor. Can see why it would slow you
down though.

>
>
>> There's only so much one can do. :-) I was having trouble getting a good
> signal 30ft away, upstairs, in a wood frame house with my old Netgear
> WAG102. The Ruckus, with the adaptive antenna array and beam forming has
> been a revelation. My geek crush on thier equipment is starting to
> approach
> SGI territory.
>
>
My geek crush on their equipment is itself crushed by the price. I should
look up some comparison benchmarks: does 5x price equal 5x performance?

jermudgeon

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Received on Wed Oct 2 11:22:46 2013

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