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HappilyInsane

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#173568 27-May-2015 21:40
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For anyone that's on the spark 100mb/s fibre you'll know that the HG630b router that comes with the plan is absolute garbage. 
The interface on it looks like it's from the late 90's/early 00's and the wifi performance is very sub par.

If you're the kind of person that doesn't upload much and aren't too worried about upload speeds, then head over to the 200mb/s plan.
Your download speed doubles but your upload speed goes down to 20mb/s.
I ended up saving $10 when going to this plan as well, which is probably due to the slower up speed.

Along with this plan comes a new router: the HG659b.
First of all, a screenshot of the UI that looks somewhat modern:



I haven't encountered a single thing that is worse about this router when comparing it to any previous Spark/ISP routers.
Along with the router you get a fibre DECT phone handset (if you didn't have one already) to get ready for the fibre landine service.
I can't personally test the 200mb/s speeds as I soon realized after I received the router; my motherboard doesn't even support 200mb/s.
But as for WiFi, I noticed a huge improvement; my speeds more than doubled!

My tests were done on a Nexus 6 running 5.1 android.
When connected to the 2.4GHz AP, I got:
                                                            28.86 MBps down
                                                            19.81 MBps up

When connected to the 5GHz AP however, I got:
                                                            94.66 MBps down
                                                            21.05 MBps up

I believe this is a somewhat big improvement.
Also the router is dual band and AC! Not too shabby for an ISP router.

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  #1313130 27-May-2015 21:47
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give the HG630 is 150mbps only when its on 40mhz which it probably isnt my default, and that its got Fast Ethernet lan ports not GBE ones what more can/could you expect?

the HG659 has ethernet that is 10x faster and the wifi is almost that if you have an AC device.

really its to be expected.



sbiddle
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  #1313227 28-May-2015 07:25
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The speedtests you posted are typical for 2.4Gzh and 5Ghz - it's not that the old router is poor, it's just that the new one has 5Ghz support. The 2.4Ghz results above are pretty typical for a great 2.4Ghz device and an area that's not too heavily congested with noise.





FullyGored
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  #1318671 7-Jun-2015 12:42
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I am sick of the constant drops with there modem HG630b - I have 3 of them that I cycle around, when they start dropping out!

A little late now, but I just purchased one of these Asus RT-AC68U AC1900 Concurrent Dual Band Wireless Router

I am hoping this fixes the constant drops that all the Wifi devices get?



HappilyInsane

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  #1318742 7-Jun-2015 16:07
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FullyGored: I am sick of the constant drops with there modem HG630b - I have 3 of them that I cycle around, when they start dropping out!

A little late now, but I just purchased one of these Asus RT-AC68U AC1900 Concurrent Dual Band Wireless Router

I am hoping this fixes the constant drops that all the Wifi devices get?


After having the router for a couple weeks, I haven't experienced any significant WiFi drops yet.

michaelmurfy
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  #1318746 7-Jun-2015 16:09
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I still prefer to go buy a better router better suited for my needs than use any ISP's router.




Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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