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[N0STIE]

Anyone knows any router that has Lantiq xDSL chipset and great wi-fi coverage apart from Netgear D7000 v2 and D7800 up to say circa £120?

Why I specifically want Lantiq xDSL chipset is because it performs best on my line being on ECI cab and gives me about 2-3ms lower latency comparing to BCM. I haven't tried MediaTek though - does it perform well on ECI cab?

Thanks!

[flilot]

Can highly recommend AVM Fritz!Box 7530 https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7530/
I got one for free when I joined Zen, the wireless range has been great, and the extra features it has may come in useful in the future.

They are around £115 new on Amazon, but you can get unused ones on eBay for around £80.

[johnson]

Probably not want you want to hear, but if you already have a good lantiq modem (a D7000 right?) why not spend the cash on one or more dedicated WAPs? If you want coverage over a larger space I'm not sure how much better you can do than the D7000 with a single box.

[PhilipD]

Hi

Anyone knows any router that has Lantiq xDSL chipset and great wi-fi coverage apart from Netgear D7000 v2 and D7800 up to say circa £120?
Thanks!

Wi-Fi is restricted by law to a maximum power, so range is really much the same on all of them these days, and people forget Wi-Fi works both ways as all your devices have a Wi-Fi transmitter/receiver in them and that doesn't magically go further just because you have a new Wi-Fi access point.

Your best bet is an access point ceiling mounted which will resolve all your range issues unless you live in a mansion.

The other option is to throw even more money at it with extra complications and get a some sort of mesh network and hope that helps resolve the issue, and just spend another £10 to £20 a year on electricity costs to run it all.

Regards

Phil

[Alex Atkin UK]

Wi-Fi is restricted by law to a maximum power, so range is really much the same on all of them these days

While that may be true, the real-world throughput at range can differ dramatically.

On my Ubiquiti nanoHD I now get speeds across the other side of the house through several walls that previously were the maximum speed I could get out of the Archer C7 before it, in the same room.

I've heard Zyxel dedicated Access Points are even better and probably what I will upgrade to when WiFi 6e comes out, as I will hopefully have FTTP by then.

[N0STIE]

Can highly recommend AVM Fritz!Box 7530 https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7530/
I got one for free when I joined Zen, the wireless range has been great, and the extra features it has may come in useful in the future.

They are around £115 new on Amazon, but you can get unused ones on eBay for around £80.

I joined Zen couple weeks ago and sold that router, wi-fi coverage is much worse than my D7000 v2, the reason why I'd like to get rid of my D7000 v2 because it freezes/locks up and only reebot seems to fix it and that is bad for DLM and it also forces me to drop PPP multiple times in order to achieve best possible latency which is bad for my wellbeing doing that every 2-3 days hence looking for replacement that will work pretty much the same or better than D7000 v2 but will not keep freezing.

[PhilipD]

Hi

On my Ubiquiti nanoHD I now get speeds across the other side of the house through several walls that previously were the maximum speed I could get out of the Archer C7 before it, in the same room.

It's all to do with radiation patterns and where the signal is being focused.  There will be places now you will hardly get any signal at all where before you did, but if that place is outside your house where you don't need it, it is better for you that it is focused in more of a beam covering areas where you do need it, rather than omnidirectional that most domestic routers will tend to favour.  You have a ceiling access point that tends to focus the signal more from it's front, rather than from all around it as a sphere, i.e. when it's on a ceiling you want little of the signal going above, you want it all below.  Hence I recommended getting a ceiling mounted access point.

In many cases when people report an improvement from one access point to another, you will often find someone saying the opposite of the same model in that the range was no different or worse, it just depends on the radiation pattern and positioning and whether that favours a persons home layout or not. 

If the OP took the D7000 and just re-positioned it higher up or moved it a few metres left or right or changed the channel they might find it improves things.  Edit: okay will not fix the rebooting.  Honestly the D7000 wasn't that brilliant, I made comments about it back in 2016 (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,19113.msg339622.html#msg339622).  Netgear domestic stuff tends to be all show and marketing, the internals are cheap and not built to last.

Regards

Phil

[Alex Atkin UK]

In many cases when people report an improvement from one access point to another, you will often find someone saying the opposite of the same model in that the range was no different or worse, it just depends on the radiation pattern and positioning and whether that favours a persons home layout or not.

Indeed, the nanoHD has MU-MIMO and beamforming, so in theory at least the signal is only being sent in the direction you need it with much greater gain.

I don't seem to get any speed benefit from MU-MIMO, its still halved if I have two clients maxing it out (and doesn't reach Gigabit between them) even when they are at opposite sides of the AP so should be using different antennas.  The latency however does seem to remain fairly low, though granted double-digits.

At full load on 5Ghz its only hitting 30% CPU whereas the C7 hit 100%.

[PhilipD]

Indeed, the nanoHD has MU-MIMO and beamforming, so in theory at least the signal is only being sent in the direction you need it with much greater gain.

Ah that is just a nice bit of marketing regarding the term beam-forming, they don't actually send the signal in a specific direction, to do that you would need a high gain directional antenna that is able to move itself around to point towards a device.  The signal still goes all over the place but they send it from at least two antenna and delay one signal slightly so that it arrives at the device with constructive interference helping to improve the signal strength.  https://www.digitalairwireless.com/articles/blog/802-11n-transmit-beamforming-txbf-explained

Often though it isn't in operation as it needs various conditions to be true to be enabled.

It will be the pattern of the signal radiation from the nano that happens to suit your usage.

Regards

Phil

[Alex Atkin UK]

Ah that is just a nice bit of marketing regarding the term beam-forming, they don't actually send the signal in a specific direction, to do that you would need a high gain directional antenna that is able to move itself around to point towards a device.  The signal still goes all over the place but they send it from at least two antenna and delay one signal slightly so that it arrives at the device with constructive interference helping to improve the signal strength.  https://www.digitalairwireless.com/articles/blog/802-11n-transmit-beamforming-txbf-explained

Often though it isn't in operation as it needs various conditions to be true to be enabled.

It will be the pattern of the signal radiation from the nano that happens to suit your usage.

Regards

Phil

That is describing 802.11n though:

Explicit vs. Implicit Beamforming

There are two main types of beamforming. Explicit, which includes 802.11ac's standard method requires transmitter and receiver to exchange information about the radio channel.

Implicit beamforming, which is used in some 802.11n products, doesn't require support on both ends of the wireless link. Instead it infers channel characteristics based on lost frames.

If each antennas pattern is aiming in a different direction then I fail to see how that's not beam-forming if it negotiates with the client on which to use.

Is it actually doing it?  I'm not sure, but its certainly performing better than any device I've ever ran OpenWRT on (ironic as the nanoHD uses a custom OpenWRT) and I'm a huge fan of OpenWRT.

[PhilipD]

Hi

If each antennas pattern is aiming in a different direction then I fail to see how that's not beam-forming if it negotiates with the client on which to use.

That is antenna diversity which has been around for a long time.  Because of the high frequencies then antennas just a few centimetres apart can have a completely different reception level, so the radio constantly picks the highest signal from one of several antenna.

Antennas in most access points aren't directional, they may favour a particular pattern but it is a long way from being directional.  If you search Google for "wifi directional antenna" and view some images you will notice they need to be pretty large and elaborate to beam themselves in a particular direction.

Explicit vs. Implicit Beamforming

This just means the device is sending specific information back about the two or more signals it is receiving so the timing can be adjusted more accurately by the access point in order to make the interference as constructive as possible, rather than deconstruction, i.e. reducing the signal.

The marketing makes people have the impression that the access point is behaving like a torch with a narrow beam and is somehow sending a signal to the device like a search light following it around, but it isn't as elaborate as that.  You will also notice there is no indication on any devices that beam forming is in use, ask yourself why that might be?  I would surmise it is because it is rarely in operation. 

Regards

Phil

[Alex Atkin UK]

Done some more reading and it really does look like MU-MIMO is a waste of time.

[N0STIE]

So can anyone recommend good reliable/dsl stable unit with good wifi? Similar to netgear d7000 that I want to get rid of.

Is it likely that router with Broadcom xDSL chipset will increase my latency by few ms comparing to Lantiq chipset? My DSLAM is ECI with no g.inp.

[mrk26]

I had similar problem not long time ago. End up with vigor 2760 in bridge mode connected to asus rt-ax88u. Perfect combo . I'm also on eci cabinet and l see better performance with lantiq chipset modems.

[Alex Atkin UK]

My preference will always be a good stable modem in bridge mode connected to a hopefully stable router, but its not the end of the world if its a little wonky as it wont cause DLM to kick in if your modem is its own rock-solid box.

As a router the Home Hub 5A kinda sucks, but as a modem flashed with OpenWRT I'm finding it extremely stable.  The only catch (other than the hassle of unlocking it but there are plenty pre-flashed on eBay) is I don't think OpenWRT supports advanced stats like QLN, pbParams, etc.