What is the best router out there for streaming media fast to many devices?

Now that we have added 3 playbooks to the wifi network here, our router is having a harder time keeping the speed up. Now we have the playbooks, 2 laptops. 2 desktops, a WD HD Live wireless home media centre, an Xbox and a Wii all running off the router. I currently have a Linksys WRT160N which I have had for about 4 years I think.

My son complains of his xbox games lagging when we watch Netflix, and sometimes streaming video from the computer to the media centre lags as well.

What would you guys recommend to tackle all these devices and still keep up the speed?

well, in my house i have a Apple Airport Extreme dual band, the newest one. its very fast indeed. very, very fast.

we have 2 apple tv's, 1 airport express (stream audio), playbook, ipad2, imac, mac mini, macbook pro, iphone and my 9810. all devices are streaming media, surfing, sharing and generally hitting the router hard all time and it never coughs, let alone chokes. with most routers i find its best to power cycle them weekly, say every sunday, to keep them running well but with the airport its always good.

its not cheap at almost 200 but its very good. guest network, dual b/g-a/n with 5ghz, gigabit lan jacks, usb for printers, drives, etc that works with a hub as well.

all in all i say well worth it for the house with lots of wifi going on. but, no config utility on http, so non windoze/mac/ipad users will not be able to configure it.

I have two Airport Extremes, very fast, very happy. VERY easy to setup, yet they support every bizarre configuration you can imagine.

Two Macbook Airs, Macbook Pro, iMac, two Apple TVs, two iPads, four iPhone's, four wireless surveillance cameras, Xbox 360, three DirecTV boxes and they never even flicker.

A little pricey for me, but I will look into it. Hoping for something around $100 up to $150 max.

Two Airport Extremes and an Airport Express, zero issues. 7 people in the house with well over 10 devices. Kids are constantly on youtube, netflix and playing on two xbox live consoles. They are expensive but worth it!

I have a Netgear 3700 that works good for hole house four computers & plus it runs a printer & diretv router for our four receivers & my Blackberry. The lastest Netgear is a 4200 I think & they say it is faster. The main thing that may slow you down is how much speed that you have coming into your house.I have ten meg DSL connection & that is all the speed can get in my area from the phone company.

Netgear 3700 here. Works great. Get the best Netgear you can afford.

Streams Hi-Def Video on 5Ghz through 2 walls about 30 feet from the TV and provides access for my BlackBerry and Laptop on 2.4 or 5Ghz no sweat.

By the way, router or router antenna placement is more critical than I once realized.

So even with your existing router, or any mentioned here, you might be able to relocate (even a six foot radius) and increase your signal to noise ratio.

"Wi Fi Diagnostics" is a utility included with Lion, I'm sure there are free/low cost equivalents available for prior versions or WinOS.

Originally Posted by Palmless

By the way, router or router antenna placement is more critical than I once realized.

So even with your existing router, or any mentioned here, you might be able to relocate (even a six foot radius) and increase your signal to noise ratio.

"Wi Fi Diagnostics" is a utility included with Lion, I'm sure there are free/low cost equivalents available for prior versions or WinOS.

I was going to mention this before Buying a new Router try moving your Router, When I moved my Cisco Router from being on my office desk to being mounted on my wall I noticed considerable improvements in connectivity.

ALSO depending on what you are using you might consider adding a switch to your network, if you are viewing/streaming content within the network, a switch might be a cheaper solution to add,

The router model doesn't make much difference, the problem is almost certainly bandwidth on the broadband connection between router and ISP. The "standard" WiFi capability is 54Mbps, and a domestic incoming service from ISP is usually less than this (unless you are one of the lucky few with commercial bandwidth fiber connection, or you live in Korea).

With ten devices all trying to share the same bandwidth you are sure to get contention. Even having two devices acctive will see a performance reduction if one of the clients is gaming or handling streamed video. By the time you get to 4-5 concurrent devices actively trying to access internet you will see the hit for sure.

The only practical fix is to provide dedicated bandwidth for devices which are sensitive to delay. That probably means the extra cost of additional broadband lines, or a commercial grade high performance link and a router which is capable of sharing with guaranteed quality of service. Don't expect change from 4 figures if you go that route.

Whatever you do I would avoid Linksys like the plague. I and other people I know have had so many issues that a simple swap of the router in the same spot fixed. That narrows it down to crap equipment. Netgear and Apple are my two trusted device makers. Branta has a good point too on the aggregate. What is your ISP service and what are the bandwidth figures they say they will be offering you, and what type of service (ADSL, fiber, cable, etc.)? I have FIOS 25 Mbps down and 5 up so even streaming a couple HD content simultaneously won't kill that.

I also have a Netgear WNDR3700 and zero issues here. It's been the best router I've owned and we all, 7 persons, are connected with it.

I'd love to have an Airport Extreme as well for the easy setup for my MacBook Pro.

The OP is on Rogers Canada

And based on his router I would guess he has "Rogers Express" which is 12 Mbps / 512 Kbps , as once you get over that Speed Rogers gives you a crappy el Cheapo router/modem box,
Rogers also is one of the worst offenders in North America for internet throttling,

and through my experience with Rogers, your average speed is always 15-20% less than the Max speeds listed,


As for Linksys, I used to LOVE their routers, they made a router (WRT54G)with too much Flash memory and you could actually install linux and have a fully customized router putting your own encryption and gate ways on it.

Linksys is now owned by Cisco, and they make some fantastic home network products that are very affordable, as well as some nice mid range products

Originally Posted by lnichols

Whatever you do I would avoid Linksys like the plague. I and other people I know have had so many issues that a simple swap of the router in the same spot fixed. That narrows it down to crap equipment. Netgear and Apple are my two trusted device makers. Branta has a good point too on the aggregate. What is your ISP service and what are the bandwidth figures they say they will be offering you, and what type of service (ADSL, fiber, cable, etc.)? I have FIOS 25 Mbps down and 5 up so even streaming a couple HD content simultaneously won't kill that.

My bandwidth provider is Eastlink with only 5Mbps down and they don't specify upload speed. I usually have fairly slow upload.

ADSL is my type of service. They do offer a 20Mpbs servcie for an extra $20 a month. Might have to do that instead of the router, or both.

Of course not all products are using the wifi at the same time. My son's gaming is probably the one that puts the most drag on the system, so maybe he should cough up the extra $20.

For router location, its in my office on the second shelf of the printer table. My son's room is directly above and the media centre bridge is about 20' and a couple of walls away.

I often have to unplug the router and modem and then replug to improve the service, again, especially when my son is gaming. Man, that Halo can consume bandwidth I guess.

I just got a netgear n600 and am happy with it so far. Didn't have to make any changes for the playbook, it just works.

Originally Posted by crackberryjill

My bandwidth provider is Eastlink with only 5Mbps down and they don't specify upload speed. I usually have fairly slow upload.

ADSL is my type of service. They do offer a 20Mpbs servcie for an extra $20 a month. Might have to do that instead of the router, or both.

Of course not all products are using the wifi at the same time. My son's gaming is probably the one that puts the most drag on the system, so maybe he should cough up the extra $20.

For router location, its in my office on the second shelf of the printer table. My son's room is directly above and the media centre bridge is about 20' and a couple of walls away.

I often have to unplug the router and modem and then replug to improve the service, again, especially when my son is gaming. Man, that Halo can consume bandwidth I guess.

Yeah 5 Mbps with Netflix and gaming at once is probably killing it. Upload would be more of issue for gaming than netflix. I'd try changing out the router first since the reboot clears things up for a while points to some issues there. Reboots would not solve bandwidth issues but you shouldn't need to do them to improve performance. If your still having issues after swapping out, but not having to do reboots, then look at more bandwidth.

I use my ISP router in my basement, which has wireless built in, for ethernet drop and firewall (and it ip enables the TV receiver over the coax) and turn off the wireless. I run the Ethernet into my Apple Airport Dual band extreme directly above on main level with the Internet port set to bridged with a PS3 hanging off. I have an older single band Airport Exteme upstairs in my bedroom set to extend the wireless network from the one downstairs, and also has Ethernet to my slingbox to connect it to network. Finally an Airport express is in my sons room upstairs at other end of house to really connect an older xbox360 to the network via ethernet (no wifi) but it also extends the network. When I look at the Airports wirless signal monitors the connections to the extender Airports are all strong and high bandwidth links wireless to the main. Never use and ISP provided gear for wireless, just use as Ethernet drop to real wireless gear. Oh and I have USB hard drives connected to the Extremes for Network Attached storage and time machine backups which is a nice value add.

Originally Posted by crackberryjill

My bandwidth provider is Eastlink with only 5Mbps down and they don't specify upload speed. I usually have fairly slow upload.

ADSL is my type of service. They do offer a 20Mpbs servcie for an extra $20 a month. Might have to do that instead of the router, or both.

Of course not all products are using the wifi at the same time. My son's gaming is probably the one that puts the most drag on the system, so maybe he should cough up the extra $20.

For router location, its in my office on the second shelf of the printer table. My son's room is directly above and the media centre bridge is about 20' and a couple of walls away.

I often have to unplug the router and modem and then replug to improve the service, again, especially when my son is gaming. Man, that Halo can consume bandwidth I guess.

Halo Requires about 40 kbps upload to play, and in turn requires that * how many players + the detail in the map, so if he's playing an 8 player game chances are he is using 20% of your available maximum bandwidth, and this was for Halo 1, Halo 3 probably uses considerably more.

I really suggest getting a faster speed internet, before the router upgrade

You should get a top-quality router AND upgrade your service if you can (faster), as was mentioned by previous posters

Cisco, Apple, D-Link,..,they're all good