I am looking to pick-up a router for my Condo. My goal is to provide wifi service to my devices and eventually my tv (once I get a smart tv). My cable modem is upstairs on the 2nd floor and my t.v is in he basement. What kind do I need to get?
You need one of 'dems ones that you plug into the wall and works and has antennas and has some blinky lights that blinks to the music....:-P
My mother recently had to replace her cable modem and the new one included a router that works very well. Check with your cable company.
If you do go with a separate router I prefer NETGEAR.
> I am looking to pick-up a router for my Condo. My goal is to provide wifi service to my devices and eventually my tv (once I get a smart tv). My cable modem is upstairs on the 2nd floor and my t.v is in he basement. What kind do I need to get?
You don't say whether it's feasible to run a wire between the two, but you should make every effort to do so...at least to the TV.
But whether you can or not, choose a wireless router that also has wired ports, and supports wireless "N" protocol at least, if not "AC"...that's the latest. It should also be a "gigabit" router, which will support the highest speeds on the wired ports.
There's probably as many opinions as there are brands, but my research has shown that Netgear has consistently outperformed such big names as Linksy and Dlink.
Finally, you should consider getting something that supports dual band...2.4ghz as well as 5 ghz, for all your friends who come over with their ancient iPhone4's and Samsung Galaxy S whatevers that can only talk 2.4 ghz.
edit: I concur with Dave's thought: Netgear makes a combo Cable modem/router that, if your cable company will allow it, you've eliminated one more box of possible trouble to deal with.
Good luck...there's a gazillion out there to choose from.
This gizmo works for me.
B-)
Ask your cable company, they usually give you one.
My ancient Linksys wifi router quit passing the Internet through one day. They gave us a dual band Netgear router which works great, very fast. 2.4ghz has the best range but the 5 ghz is the fastest. My router is in the back so the 5 is mostly too weak. I hooked my Samsung blu Ray player to it on 2.4 and it's plenty fast enough. I could run a cable under the house but haven't needed to.
The downside of using their router is you can't administer it yourself. I had the linksys set up with MAC address filtering but I can't do that with theirs.
Around here, the cable companies charge a monthly rental fee on modems and such. The upside is getting a free replacement when the modem goes bad. One downside is, of course, paying for something that we don't own and have less control over.
This is no help. I just checked to see if you had taken up woodworking as a hobby.
Actually that was my first thought when I saw the title of the thread.
You don't experience drop-out after a few minutes of inactivity? I was considering one of these until I read the reviews...
I have a NETGEAR and am very happy with it. I would look for a dual band wireless with as high data transfer rate as you can afford. Don't go cheap, you'll regret it.
-V
I would choose based upon your provider. In our case, our provider is rather unstable, and needs to reset the connection from their end about once a month. If we were to use our own router, their blanket response would be "must be your router".
Having all their equipment makes your life easier when things go wrong, even if it is more expensive. I hate to say it, but if your provider doesn't like to play nice, they kind of have you by the balls.
I also agree that place the router so (in future) you can wire it to your tv. Particularly in a condo, where there is a lot of other usage on wifi frequencies, wired is going to be substantially better.
If you are t-mobile customer you can get this free of charge. Works great! I just picked it up few days ago.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/11/t-mobile-personal-cellspot/
