| So I'm in the process of buying my first house and a big priority for me is Internet speed. I've been dealing with public apartment Wi-Fi for far too long and am ready to drop some money on a good setup that will allow me to stream, download, etc from multiple devices at once. But after asking around it seems like nobody is content with their Internet service. I get that this is a product that we will always want to be faster, but I don't wanna get stuck in a contract only to have shitty, mediocre service. So the questions are: - What are some good ISPs? (yeah oxymoron, I know) - Am I better off going with a local, small company ISP or should I stick to the big players? (Comcast, Spectrum, etc) - Recs for good modems/routers? - How much of a difference do higher quality modems/routers make? Any advice and conversation is appreciated. I'm seriously clueless about this kind of stuff, lol. |
| If you are lucky enough to have municipal fiber in the area like LUS in Lafayette then that should be your first choice. People like to say Comcast is the worst but they're not as bad as AT&T, never go with AT&T. ISPs will generally provide you with a modem or modem/router combination. They're fine, usually, but you could end up getting a dud and you'll have to return it. If you use your own equipment the ISPs won't really help with anything and will blame your stuff if something goes wrong. |
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abhutrash said: So I'm in the process of buying my first house and a big priority for me is Internet speed. I've been dealing with public apartment Wi-Fi for far too long and am ready to drop some money on a good setup that will allow me to stream, download, etc from multiple devices at once. But after asking around it seems like nobody is content with their Internet service. I get that this is a product that we will always want to be faster, but I don't wanna get stuck in a contract only to have shitty, mediocre service. So the questions are: - What are some good ISPs? (yeah oxymoron, I know) - Am I better off going with a local, small company ISP or should I stick to the big players? (Comcast, Spectrum, etc) - Recs for good modems/routers? - How much of a difference do higher quality modems/routers make? Any advice and conversation is appreciated. I'm seriously clueless about this kind of stuff, lol. It really, really depends on where you live. For me, *most of my life I've lived in rural Missouri, so while we don't have an option for fiber out here, the DSL works great (15-25mbps) because there aren't any neighbors or really anything else that affects our bandwidth. Three people live here, and we can have multiple smart phones, an ipad, a laptop, 2 desktops, a roku streaming Netflix/Hulu, and running the ADT security system on it, and have zero issues with download speed or streaming. (To put into perspective, I can direct download a 500MB file in about 2 minutes). So I have a good experience with the local small ISP (been with them for 10-15 years). Now, I also have had Google Fiber for four years during college in the city I lived in, and never had issues with it. I also lived with someone for two years in the Kansas City metro area who had Comcast, and didn't have issues with it. I know there are people that have really bad luck with this sort of thing, but I've had good experience outside of a brief yearlong stint with satellite internet. A former instructor I had lived out in the middle of nowhere (like me but outside of the serviceable range of a local ISP) and had awful experiences regarding getting decent internet service. It was basically a choice to either get satellite or deal with it, and he chose to deal with it because satellite - especially Hughes Net - is notoriously bad. As @Gogetters said, the ISP will usually provide you with a modem; I haven't heard of them providing a router as well, that's always been on your own dime in my experience, but again different places, companies - different options. Haven't experienced getting a dud modem firsthand, but the ISP will generally replace it at no cost to you if that does happen. (Though a 3-4 minute power-cycling once weekly is a good practice and highly recommended regardless of your location/ISP for both your modem and router). The router I've always known the end user to have to provide themselves. You *usually get what you pay for, but I've always gone with Cisco Linksys variations, and they've been reliable for me. If you want to make settings/changes, the interface to log into is very simple and user-friendly for them as well. One brand that I have heard mixed-to-negative reviews of is Belkin, though I've never personally owned/used one. You would definitely want at least 802.11n wireless standards (most nowadays should be at least this, but certainly should still check the box/specs when purchasing it) - and that would probably suffice. Though if you want to be forward-thinking, you could go ahead and get one that has 802.11ac wireless. (if you don't know what I'm talking about just google it). At the end of the day, this decision is also weighted on your location/internet provider plan as well. You can get the high-end $150-$200 routers, I can't speak much on those regarding for personal in-home usage. They *usually work great in office and business settings though. My opinion is its a little overkill for your home usage, unless you have a pretty good reason for needing one. Personally, the router I have is medium-to-low end, when I got it I think it was $80-$90, but now its down to $50-$55 at Walmart https://www.walmart.com/ip/Linksys-E2500-NP-N600-Dual-Band-N-Router/22027099 ^^^its got 802.11n & up to 300mbps WiFi - which is more than enough for me right now (this is the one that I noted before as being reliable). It has four ports that your can physically connect into if necessary, which I use two ports for the two desktops but the other two are left unused as everything else in my house is connected wirelessly. I can't imagine a basic home setup that you'd need more than four ports for, but if you would for some reason that is also something to consider when choosing a router to buy. My point with the router is - you can do what you want with it. I'd recommend starting out with something similar to the one I provided the link for. It's not going to break your budget, and it allows you to test out your housing setup effectively. Hope this can be of some help. If you have any specific questions feel free to PM me. |
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| tip: sometimes ISPS (cough Comcast cough) will charge you a monthly fee for using a supplied modem/router. they don't tell you about the extra fee of course - the charge slips into the monthly bill without a warning. you can avoid paying extra by purchasing your own modem/router. edit: if your internet plan is capped at 100mbps (usually the actual speed you get is significantly lower), that's the maximum speed you'll get, regardless if your router can do 1gbps or not. |
DreamingBeatsMar 31, 2018 1:30 PM
| You can buy lossless digital music from your favorite Japanese artists on https://ototoy.jp/. The songs are all DRM-free and you can re-download your purchased albums as you wish. Show your support to your favorite artist if you can! ps. if you are looking for Japanese albums, you have to search it in Japanese (not romaji). Just copy and paste the name. For those who want to learn Japanese through anime Resources for learning the language |
| Sounds like you need some LinusTechTips. Yeah, these stuff are mostly for routers. That's because the rest of the bottleneck just usually comes from your ISP's supported speeds, and I can only recommend either Comcast or Google Fiber since they're pretty decent. I've been content with 200Mbps where I live and I can't think of a reason why would anyone need more than that for personal use. Streams and downloads are flawless. Could only complain about the ping on gaming but I'm thousands of miles in the sea from most game servers and I'm not an expert at making light travel faster inside a tube of submarine cable. I can't do my own streams either since our ISP here doesn't support symmetrical broadband speeds. |
| ^ lol isnt signal boosters illegal? at least here in the philippines |
deg said: ^ lol isnt signal boosters illegal? at least here in the philippines Wow seriously? Signal booster is more of if your in a room where unable to reach the router/broadband, it gives better signal . Best is to get the highest tier internet package and should sort it out. |
 "Don't give up after failing just twice. We'll be able to do it next time. Failure is the stepping stone to success." |
-Miku_Meister- said: deg said: ^ lol isnt signal boosters illegal? at least here in the philippines Wow seriously? Signal booster is more of if your in a room where unable to reach the router/broadband, it gives better signal . Best is to get the highest tier internet package and should sort it out. ye but i forgot the details on why they are illegal here though |
| Maybe signal boosters are illegal because of the additional radiation and/or because the signal could hinder other signals Either way, pretty old topic. I wonder if the thread creator managed to find a solution Also, wired setup is still better than WiFi |
Noboru said: Maybe signal boosters are illegal because of the additional radiation and/or because the signal could hinder other signals Either way, pretty old topic. I wonder if the thread creator managed to find a solution Also, wired setup is still better than WiFi ye i remember now something like other signals are interfered by the signal boosters like you said |
deg said: Noboru said: Maybe signal boosters are illegal because of the additional radiation and/or because the signal could hinder other signals Either way, pretty old topic. I wonder if the thread creator managed to find a solution Also, wired setup is still better than WiFi ye i remember now something like other signals are interfered by the signal boosters like you said Probably back in the old days but the use of signal booster isnt no different than using a microwave which uses the same frequence (2.4ghz) |
| "Don't give up after failing just twice. We'll be able to do it next time. Failure is the stepping stone to success." |
| Live near the ISP data center or interchange nodes that has fibre optic service. But doesn't help if the node is flooded with users traffic. ISP usually oversell slots than the network can provide is why there will always be network congestion at certain hour of the day. I don't think you can avoid this issue but perhaps Starlink doesn't do their business that way. |
| Depends where you live and you should be looking for a plan with the least amount of latency or ping. Low latency with medium speed internet is better than high speed internet with high latency. IMO, cable and DSL are kind of the same to me. All that matters is how much ping you got. Even so, getting medium or better upload speed is the best for backing up your files. Otherwise, use a flash drive or external SSD. If you plan on living in a hideout or backup home in the middle of nowhere with good internet, then wait for Project Kupier or wait for cell phone towers to be built and learn how to make a solar-powered mobile phone mast featuring optic fiber. The mast will need to be weatherproof. A former phone technician in England got tired of slow internet so he got his DIY phone mast and got super high speed internet. On the other hand, if I were to stay in the middle of nowhere for weeks, then of course satellite TV will be better than streaming (no surprise that anime on demand will still be thing for satellite TV, it's a popular medium). Of course I would bring a portable multimedia device and watch anime via SSD or flash drive. |
Kurt_IrvingDec 28, 2021 10:23 PM
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