Router recommendation anyone

[sherlock07]

I have a Virgin Media super hub 3, and at it's best the wi-fi signal is almost useless. I can set the hub to modem only.

Does anyone now of a good wi-fi router up to about £70.

Thanks in advance.

[astral276]

It depends on what your needs are.

The only router I have experience of is my Netgear WNR2200. I've used this with Virgin cable since the old VM 250 modem days and still use it in preference to the v1 hub's inbuilt one. I can only say it has been reliable and meets my needs.

That Netgear model is rather old now (and may be scarce) and newer better models are available.

[sherlock07]

It depends on what your needs are.

The only router I have experience of is my Netgear WNR2200. I've used this with Virgin cable since the old VM 250 modem days and still use it in preference to the v1 hub's inbuilt one. I can only say it has been reliable and meets my needs.

That Netgear model is rather old now (and may be scarce) and newer better models are available.

Thanks Mel, I just need to improve the wi-fi the wireless built into the hub is useless.

[astral276]

Thanks Mel, I just need to improve the wi-fi the wireless built into the hub is useless.

If it's a problem of distance between your device and the hub then you could look at a range extender. That would be cheaper than a router.

[sherlock07]

If it's a problem of distance between your device and the hub then you could look at a range extender. That would be cheaper than a router.

Not necessarily a distance problem, sometimes the wi-fi is available even to next doors house other times I can be right next to the hub and nothing. often requires rebooting the hub, just keeps dropping the signal.

It has been known to be a problem with the hub in the past a firmware update was supposed to fix it.

[cambrensis]

Hi Sherlock! If you caste around in the forums at Virgin, you'll find this described for every Modemmodel not just yours.
When I had the problem and found this out I became suspicious and looked around.
I decided to check the drivers on my laptop wifi. Windows reported them as up-to-date - all that means is that I had the latest drivers on their database, so I checked with Realtek who was reported to be the manufacturer. Yes, I had the latest drivers but the card was no longer supported and those drivers were not for W10.
I went online and bought a usb wifi dongle which worked for 15 and 2.4.
When it arrived, I switched off the internal wifi, ran the driver CD for the new one and plugged it in. I then restarted the modem and rebooted the laptop.
The result has been perfect...my modem runs fine and is not shutting down frequently. Everything on the network runs well. So do check your driver situation - it may well be the problem. Good luck.

[stopusingebay]

When 801.11n came about in 2010, many of the newer devices had antennas built in to the device itself. This allowed MiMO to work, but it seemed to cut the range considerably compared to the older 11g devices that had a single good antenna. Many of those devices also were set to double channel mode (150/300mbps) by default, so they are twice as susceptible to interference. A wireless baby monitor, video camera, cordless phone, other wireless network, or microwave can take down your whole network. Despite being advertised as nearly 6 times as fast as 11g, in the real world the speed is often less or the range is cut in half due to different antennas and increased interference.

So a simple single external antenna wireless access point / router from 2005 or later seems to get the job done fine. Set it to channel 1,6, or 11 (1, 5, 9, or 13 for Europe) and see how well it works on each channel. The antenna should be perpendicular to where you are when you connect to it.

Wi-Fi has become an absolute mess with misconfigured and improperly set up devices.