New Router - To improve connection/speed(s)

Afternoon!

I am looking for a new Router, i've been looking at the Belkin N1 Vision (Offer: £30 New)... Would anyone recommend this router and what are your experiences, if you own one?

Would anyone recommend a different Wireless Router, instead of the above?

I am with Sky 'Unlimited' and I am fully aware of there T&Cs in relation to using your own equipment, so no need to remind me... The Router Sky Provide has a very poor Wireless Signal and cannot be tweaked (adjust Noise Margin) etc.

Hope you can all help, many thanks in advance

Most people I believe (myself included) would recommend a router with a Broadcom chipset in it.

Currently IMHO the best router is the Billion 7800N - http://bit.ly/wCOvef - but it's quite expensive at >£110; the next best is probably the Billion 7700N - http://bit.ly/xV1f9t - which is a far more reasonable £40-£50ish.

Another alternative would be the TP-Link TD-w8960N - http://bit.ly/wH5xxa - at £30-£40ish.

As for Belkin; I've had bad experiences with a few of them over the years, so tend to avoid them.

The 7800N allows you to tweak and save the noise margin (mine is down at 1db and holds nicely there); from recollection the 7700N and TD-W8960N allows you to tweak the SNR, but only stays in place until you reboot the router.

As for the Billion 7800N , is there a particular revision of this equipment I need or does the router provide software to adjust the Noise Margin or is it like all others, uses a hack? I'm just wondering as manufacturers tend block any attempts to hack the SNR by either new firmware which cannot be downgraded or a slight hardware change... I think I will go for the 7800n but I am still looking at alternatives if anyone can recommend any...

I use to use 2Wire Equipment alot and found them excellent but are hard to get hold of over here in the UK

Thanks for your help thus far @aramsay

I'm running the latest UK firmware (1.06e), and it's just a simple case of going to <IP>/snr.html to set the SNR - it was the same in 1.06d too.

I've put together some Cacti templates that you can download too (if you use Cacti) which will allow you to monitor your SNR, throughput, etc.

This page has some very good information on what values to put in to tweak the SNR, along with recommendations on setting Impulse Noise Protection.

This may sound obvious, but when purchasing the 7800N; make sure you do get the 7800N and not the 7800, as that has no wireless!

Hello

I bought the 7800N, I'm also on SKY and am really far from the exchange. I went from 2MB to 3MB by tweaking the SNR margin. Really couldn't recommend it enough, amazing WiFi coverage, stable connection... also love the QOS settings I have made it so XBOX Live is not effected to much by my Wife browsing websites.

Many thanks, much appreciated...

Time to hunt for the best price online...... :/

I don't understand this change of SNR..

It doesn't seem to make much difference at all....

I've set the snr value to 30 and it knocks me down to a margin of 5.6 Down and 8.5 UP

I've change it up to 50 and the margin is now 5.4 Down and 8.6 UP

I then change it to 100 and the margin is now 7.1 Down and 8.6 UP

I decided to change it to 95 and got 6.9 Down and 8.7 UP

Am I doing something wrong here as this makes no sense?

Just tried changing to a value of 1 and got;

5.6 DOWN and 8.7 UP

-------------------------------------------------------
Parameters:

DSP Firmware Version A2pB025f.d22k
DMT Status No Defect
Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 736
Downstream 16378
SNR Margin(Upstream) 8.5
SNR Margin(Downstream) 5.6
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 11.0
Line Attenuation(Downstream) 21.5

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I use to use 2Wire Equipment alot and found them excellent but are hard to get hold of over here in the UK

There are plenty of 2wire 2700HGV-C and 2701HGV-C available new and boxed on ebay.

Noise margin setting is a logarithmic scale, not a straight line. I don't know your router, but most tweaking is by setting a percentage of the value your ISP has set at the exchange end.

I think the standard Sky setting is 7dB. 100 therefore has no effect.

I can't do logs in my head , but on the more usual 6dB setting 50 would give you 3dB, 200 would give you 9dB. If you started from a base setting of 12dB by your ISP then 50 would give you 9dB, and 200 would give you 15dB.

With your base figure of 7dB, the results you are getting look about right.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 07-Feb-12 13:33:14)