Wireless setup
 

Hey everyone. I was wandering around Costco today and decided to try a new router. My old one is a DIR-615, which I have no problems with, but my xbox 360 is up a floor and on the opposite side of the house and occasionally looses connection with netflix. I grabbed a e4500v2 and have now set it up with no issue (very easy).

When setting it up I realized I had very little knowledge on the actual settings in a router, so I thought I would pose a few questions:

1. Do you use 20 or 40mhz on your own routers?
2. Mine defaulted to mixed mode on both 2.4 and 5ghz bands with WPA/WPA2 selected. When I tried to deselect mixed mode it said I would need to change from WPA/WPA2 to something else to do so. Do you run mixed mode? Is there any performance to gain by being in N, vice mixed?
3. Do you use WPA, or a different standard?

FYI I believe everything in my house is 2.4ghz. 2xiphone 4, and 1 laptop, except my xbox 360 (which has a dual band antenna). Desktop is wired.

i use

20 mhz
wireless N only
WPA2/AES (no TKIP)
auto chan off (1, 6, or 11)

What grinder said and you can also scan the different wireless networks that are around your house to see which channel is better to use.

Thanks for the points.

Any other suggestions/opinions?

1. Do you use 20 or 40mhz on your own routers?
Never really played around with this.

2. Mine defaulted to mixed mode on both 2.4 and 5ghz bands with WPA/WPA2 selected. When I tried to deselect mixed mode it said I would need to change from WPA/WPA2 to something else to do so. Do you run mixed mode? Is there any performance to gain by being in N, vice mixed?

I personally have separate APs for each speed. AC>N>G>B>A in terms of performance. If you use mixed mode then your wireless router bumps all devices connected down to the speed of the lowest device. So a single device connecting at B causes your entire network to slow to a crawl at 11Mbs (this is why i have different wireless points). Also, 2.4Ghz is incredibly congested - use 5GHz where possible. Most devices dont support this however unless they have dual antennas.

3. Do you use WPA, or a different standard?

Try to stay away from WPA. Go with WPA2 if possible Avoid WEP like the plague!

Wpa2 is the one that is recommended for security. The others have already been cracked. 2.4 gigs is the standard wireless frequency but if your devices can work on 5 gigs then that would be better cause there is less congestion and interference.

Use only g or n setting, n being the newest and better one, the others are outdated, unless your computers are old and can't handel those and need a or b.

- Use N only mode, unless you have some devices that are only G
- Use 40Mhz, unless you have some devices that won't connect. It allows for higher wireless bandwidth.
- Use WPA2 AES. The most secure.

It's kind of obnoxious when you live in an apartment complex with a load of other tech savvy people, then you end up with a dozen other networks using 40 MHz on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and there's no channel you can use without overlapping at least five other networks...

Not really avoidable though, unless you could coordinate the entire building to everyone using different 20 MHz channels from their neighbors in each direction.

Well you could all just talk to each other and agree who uses 5.0 GHz and who uses 2.4 GHz :P That way everyone is happy.