Group test: 12 dual-band routers reviewed
Staff Writer
| 13 Mar 2012
Unhappy with your wireless network performance? With the 2.4GHz frequency band becoming ever-more congested, the best way to give your Wi-Fi the boost it needs is with a dual-band router.
When wireless first came along in the 1990s, it was a brave, exciting new world. But in the many years since, as the availability of wireless has steadily spread, the number of devices jostling for attention in the frequency band used by most laptops and mobile devices has exploded.
The result is heavy congestion, and if you’re still using a single-band 2.4GHz-only router, the likelihood is that, at one time or another, your wireless router has had its performance compromised by the activities of neighbouring wireless networks, microwave ovens, video and TV senders, Bluetooth devices and even baby monitors.
TWIN TURBO
If you want smooth HD video streaming over your wireless network, snappy backups and a reliable, steady connection, you need a dual-band router. Dual-band routers operate in a different radio frequency band – 5GHz – that’s far less congested, and can offer faster speeds and more reliable operation.
That’s why 11 of the 12 routers we’ve reviewed this month are dual band. But before you dive into the meat of the Labs, there are a couple of crucial things you ought to know. First, all dual-band routers are not made equal. Some have only one radio inside and that means choosing between running either a 2.4GHz network, or a 5GHz one.
As some wireless devices only operate in the 2.4GHz band, you’ll either end up running a router like this in 2.4GHz mode, thus wasting all its 5GHz potential, or running two routers at once – a rather unsatisfactory compromise, and not very green. If a router doesn’t offer concurrent or simultaneous dual band, then it’s probably best avoided.
SPEEDY STREAMS
Some of the more expensive models also offer a 450Mbits/sec top speed, where routers have previously been limited to 300Mbits/sec. This claimed throughput figure depends on the number of 150Mbits/sec streams a router supports and how many antennae it has.
A standard 300Mbits/sec router supports two streams, with two antennae for transmitting and two or three for receiving data (also referred to as 2x2 and 2x3 configurations). The Cisco Linksys E4200 on the other hand, supports three 150Mbits/sec streams, in this case with three antennae for transmitting and three for receiving data (a 3x3 configuration).
Many routers also offer one or two USB ports for sharing storage, printers, and even 3G dongles, which can be useful if your ADSL or cable ever goes down.
HOW WE TEST
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| The Wi-Spy DBx allows us to monitor the RF output of neighbouring networks and other devices |
Assessing the performance of a dual-band wireless router is complicated. Not only do we need to provide an idea of how fast it can go, we also need to indicate how well it performs at long range, and we need to test these aspects of performance in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands.
To test these elements, we use two laptops running Windows 7, one connected to the test router via Gigabit or 10/100 Ethernet (whichever is available), the other connected via wireless, using the 3x3 stream-capable Intel WiFi Link 5300 chipset. We then set up the router to use WPA2 security with AES encryption and, where available, enable channel bonding to ensure maximum performance.
To assess speed, a series of small and large files is copied to and from a Windows share on the wired laptop. We run these tests in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands at a range of 2.5m to assess top speed. Next, we run the tests in each frequency band with the wireless laptop placed at a distance of 40m from the router, with one 19mm-thick wooden wall and a double-glazed window in the way. This test indicates how each router performs at range. You’ll find a full breakdown of speed figures at the bottom of the feature table, and graphs on the Results page at the end of this Labs.
During testing, we monitor the airwaves using another laptop equipped with a Wi-Spy DBx radio frequency spectrum analyser. Supplied to us by MetaGeek, this allows us to ensure each router is using the optimum channel, and that no other devices in the vicinity are causing interference during testing.
Finally, where available, we also test the speed of a router’s USB shared storage feature. This time using a portable USB 3 hard disk as the source, we connect a laptop to an Ethernet port on the router to disc over the the maximum speed of USB transfers.
Wireless Routers - Feature Table
click to enlarge
Looking for the reviews of the 12 routers? They're in the sidebar at the start of this story (scroll up).
Results
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
There are several interesting things to note from the figures this month. The most telling is that three-stream 802.11n routers don’t seem to have heralded universal improvements in speed.
True, the three-stream (450Mbits/sec) routers in this Labs all have raw speed in abundance, and in general they’re quicker than their two-stream (300Mbits/sec) counterparts. At close range, the three-stream routers occupy most of the top speed slots. The single-band Buffalo three-stream router is top of the 2.4GHz charts, with a speed of 19.5MB/sec.
However, an advantage isn’t guaranteed. In fact, the fastest router over 5GHz is the humble 300Mbits/sec Asus RT-N56U, which also placed near the top in the close-range 2.4GHz test and both long-range 5GHz and 2.4GHz tests.
Of course, this has no bearing on how quick USB sharing is. Here the RT-N56U again shines, with a significant lead over all the other routers.
View from the Labs
The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a discrepancy between this year’s performance figures and last year’s routers Labs.
First, we’ve moved from expressing performance in megabits per second to megabytes per second. This makes it easier to understand how fast a router is. Take the ASUS RT-N56U, for instance: in 5GHz mode at close range, it transferred our large test files from the router to our wireless laptop at an average of 24MB/ sec. It’s a small jump to work out how long, say, a 1GB file will take to download. It’s a shade under 43 seconds in this case, in case you don’t have a calculator handy.
But we’ve also had a change in test equipment forced upon us. Our trusty test laptop, a Lenovo W500, shuffled off this mortal coil. In its place, we’ve instituted a Gateway NO50, another business machine with the same 3x3 antenna configuration and wireless chipset – an Intel WiFi Link 5300.
You might think there wouldn’t be much difference, but there is. In the last Labs, the best speed we achieved over 2.4GHz at distance was around 8MB/sec; this time the fastest hit an average of 5.6MB/sec. Over 5GHz the gulf is even more marked, with average speeds hitting 6MB/sec last time and now struggling to breach the 3MB/sec barrier. This is almost certainly down to the placement of antennae in our new laptop.
In Labs, where every router is tested using the same equipment, this isn’t a problem, but it illustrates the need to improve hardware at both ends of the connection. Getting the best wireless router is important, and there’s a great selection of hardware to choose from here, but neglect your laptop hardware at your peril.
There are several interesting things to note from the figures this month. The most telling is that three-stream 802.11n routers don’t seem to have heralded universal improvements in speed.
True, the three-stream (450Mbits/sec) routers in this Labs all have raw speed in abundance, and in general they’re quicker than their two-stream (300Mbits/sec) counterparts. At close range, the three-stream routers occupy most of the top speed slots. The single-band Buffalo three-stream router is top of the 2.4GHz charts, with a speed of 19.5MB/sec.
However, an advantage isn’t guaranteed. In fact, the fastest router over 5GHz is the humble 300Mbits/sec Asus RT-N56U, which also placed near the top in the close-range 2.4GHz test and both long-range 5GHz and 2.4GHz tests.
Of course, this has no bearing on how quick USB sharing is. Here the RT-N56U again shines, with a significant lead over all the other routers.
Looking for the reviews of the 12 routers? They're in the sidebar at the start of this story (scroll up).
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