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More and more often we have devices in our pocket or purse that allow us to connect to the Internet. We cannot imagine functioning without constant access to the network. Lack of access to the Internet repeatedly limits our functionality. Therefore, everyone cares about constant access to information, e-mail and social media, not necessarily wanting to use only mobile network and data transmission.
Wireless routers have now become a necessity, but buying the right device is often a problem... We have at our disposal a vast choice of routers working in different ranges and having different functionality.
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Many users go to a shop, or browse the websites of online shops and see so many devices available, face a big dilemma. Shops very often praise their multi-purpose products, which usually cost a lot and do not always meet our requirements. We do not need so many unnecessary functions, which we will never probably use. Most often when buying a router we expect good range, good quality wireless connection and performance. And, of course, a good price/quality ratio - because this factor is also increasingly being taken into account.
Therefore, it is also worth taking into account that there are routers that support both 802.1ac and 802.1n standards, and their prices can even exceed 150-200 PLN, but the devices on the market do not even meet the assumptions of the relevant standard.
But does it have to be expensive to buy an efficient router that meets our needs? And in relation to the amount spent, will we surely achieve the expected performance, adequate to the price of the product?
In this article, I will try to dispel all these doubts...
The most popular routers, working in both 802.11ac and 802.11n standards, were collected for testing, which were then compared in terms of coverage, performance, functionality and whether they are reasonably priced.
Of course, for testing purposes we have prepared a small network that reflects the use of the Internet in a typical home environment.
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It was also worth adding here that tests were performed on Totolink A2000UA wireless cards working in AC1200.
Smartphone users have not been forgotten either...
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With the phone (Xiaomi Mi A1), which supports a 5GHz network, it was worthwhile to measure the strength of the signals of individual units immediately. In this case we will focus on the 5GHz network, because while its range is shorter you can get higher performance.
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The WifiAnalyzer application is completely sufficient to indicate reliable signal strength on android-based mobile devices. As you can see, all routers have very similar results within -50dBm, and this is a very satisfying result, with a channel width of 40MHz and a distance of over 50 meters from transmitting devices.
With devices based on android, we can also perform performance tests based on a mobile version of the amazing iperf tool - Magic Iperf, and the network diagram is shown above (Schemat 1).
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And here the situation doesn't look so even. It is obvious that individual routers deviate from the performance level, despite having such a good signal (-50dBm). I'll add that all routers had a fixed 48 channel and its width (80MHz) for the duration of the test.
The best result was in this test was achieved by the Totolink A3, even if only slightly better, which provided us with about 70Mbit/sec at a distance of more than 45m, both ways. A little bit worse, because with the result of 50Mbits per second, were the devices from Xiaomi and the Gamer(!?) version of Netis. And the routers from TP-Link, or to be more precise, the two models we are testing, are significantly worse than the other test participants.
And finally it's time for the most important part of our tests - that is the performance and speed of tcp and udp packets, wirelessly. After all, this argument most often becomes decisive for the router purchase.
With a reminder of our test network diagram below.
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The results obtained ... hmmm, it is best to see for yourself how it looked and draw subjective conclusions. The following graphics show everything in the palm of your hand, and the iperf tool and its graphical version based on the Java platform called Jperf 2.0, really worked out great.
The results are from the iperf client side; the TCP protocol for 1 and 5 data streams (sender <-> reciver), at a distance of 15 and more than 30 meters, and an additional obstacle, as mentioned earlier, was the wall.
TOTOLINK A3
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ASUS RT-N12
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NETIS 2409
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NETIS 2681 GAMING
Tenda F3
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TP-LINK ARCHER C2
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TP-LINK ARCHER C50
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XIAOMI MI AC1200
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XIAOMI MI 3C
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As you can see immediately, the discrepancy is enormous - both at 15m and above all above 30m, routers have completely different possibilities. This is best illustrated by the following graphs:
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The operating conditions are the same for all devices, not to mention the location, the same channel and constant noise in the environment on 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz. and it would seem that the price then also played an important role in our test.
Totolink A3 (AC1200), which costs about 80PLN, and this is the price of N 300Mbits devices, has shown that it can compete with devices that are twice as expensive, and yet are unable to achieve its performance.
Therefore, you can certainly recommend the Totolink A3 router to any user who wants to achieve very good wireless conditions for a small amount of money.
I invite you to continue discussions on this topic in our forum at
www.forum.anteny24.pl