I am by no means a networking guru, but I do work in the IT industry so I know some things more than the average person.
One good example is this – If you connect to your wireless router at 300mbps, it does NOT mean you will get 300 mbps speed. It means you can get “up to” 300 mbps, best case. Real life situations often cut this speed by 50% or more. Why? Because of all the electromagnetic signals being generated by everything around you – your phone, your TV (worse still if CRT TV), fridge, microwave etc.
Continue reading Wireless, AC, and Routers →
Recently I was contacted by Starhub to re-contract my home internet line. It was then that I realised that 1 gbps seem to be the “norm” these days, and did not see any lower speed plans on offer.
The entire upgrade is a story for another time, but it did force me to get a new router – the Netgear R7000, because the one given by Starhub, the DIR 850L, is just not powerful enough. The R7000 was my choice because it was geared for media and gaming activities – the 2 most important things I do on the Internet 🙂
Now, the one given by Starhub should be fine for most people. Downlink (WAN–LAN) is a respectable 750-850 mbps. Uplink (LAN-WAN) is the issue. I only managed to get 350 – 550mbps on it. Worse still if I enabled some other settings that were “OFF” at default state. If I enabled enough of these settings to depart from the “factory default”, the router plods along at 400 mbps downlink, and 250mbps uplink.
Continue reading Upgrading to 1 Gbit Plan →
Rants and Ramblings of a Typical Kiasu Singaporean
