re: Network speed test

I had Frontier FIOS for a period of time on their 50/50 plan and thought it was pretty good, except that I had to reboot that router/modem piece of crap 3-4 times a day. I ran a speed test and was getting speeds in the low 30’s, both up and down. In the end, I decided to go back to Comcast because of re-booting issue, and the fact that my wife did not like the channel selection and the “On Demand” choices.

I got an Arris Surfboard SB 6141 modem and a Linksys N600 router, and everything was fine, but my kids eventually started complaining that the speeds were slower, and when we’d stream movies on the TV, they would freeze up periodically.

I ran a speedtest, and I was getting 3 down and 2 up. No good, since we were paying for 150/10, so that wasn’t going to fly. I started by replacing the wireless card on my desktop with a dual band USB adapter. Now I was getting about 40 up and 10 down. I switched to the 5GHz channel and got 60 up and 10 down. Finally, I bought a new router – NetGear AC1750 R6400 – and now my wifi speeds increased to 170 up and 13 down (more than the advertised 150/10). I also want to note that the ethernet cable that came with my new router was much better than than the one I had previously been using to connect my router to my modem.

I definitely notice the difference, now.