Hello everyone,
This is my first post on the forum. I am using act broadband. When I called the sales guy regarding wifi modem he said any dsl modem will work. I am now confused (also my act cable has only 4 wires unlike my other ethernet cables).
I dont want to buy some cheap wifi modem Instead I am ready to buy some standard modem so that i can use in future also. Can I buy any wifi
router (I am planning to buy
Cisco 4200 ) will it work with act bb or is there some special kind of modem with DSL input.
Kindly help me
You can connect ACT broadband to any standard Wi-FI routers available in the market. Do not buy the
ADSL+Router varieties. ACT gets an Ethernet cable to your router.
What kind of router?
There are too many routers to choose from depending your needs. Home routers price varies from Rs 1500 to Rs 16500 (ex:
Apple Time Capsule)
If you are interested in just internet connection and media streaming from internet you can go for any router which supports G (54mbps) or N but better to invest in an 150 mbps N router (150mbps /300Mbps / 450mbps) for future use.
If you are using the router to connect many devices, file transfer between devices, media streaming,
NAS (Network Attached Storage), wireless printing etc. better to invest in a high end dual band router, the performance will be much better
High end routers support the following apart from the internet connections the following
1. Dual Band (5 GHz and 2.4 GHz) you can do the streaming and file transfer in 5GHz and other activities Internet, printing etc in 2.4GHz
2. 4 or 5 Gig Ethernet ports, Cheaper ones will have only 10/100 mbps , This will useful when you want to connect your main server to the Ethernet port.
3. Fast file transfer between your computers and wireless devices, between any devices, wired or wireless.
4. USB
printer port for converting your cheap USB printer as a wireless printer. Now printers comes with a Wi-Fi support except the cheaper ones
5. USB port for connecting your mass storage (HDD) act as a NAS. This can be used as a centralized storage for sharing all your files. If you want better performance go for a dedicated NAS. Ex: Synology Diskstation (
www.synology.com)
6. UnP (Universal Plug and Play) this enables to stream your media between all your DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) devices, ex: PS3 / media players or most of the high end
TVs act as DLNA client. Your desktop can act as DLNA server or Synology diskstation function very well as a DLNA server.
7. Faster response if you use Apple Airplay for Mirroring your
iPad/
iPhone or playing media files
8. It has firewall and employs all kind of security features.
9. It supports guest account for any visitors. (You do not have to give your Wi-Fi password
All the major manufactures have high end routers .
Linksys E4200 or E 4500, Apple Airport Extreme, Apple Time Capsule, Linksys old WRT610N,
Asus RT-N56,
Netgear WNDR4500,
D-Link DIR-855 etc.. The list is long.
These generally cost Rs 10,000 upwards.
I have tested ACT on all my high end routers which are accumulated over years as listed below. ACT is working with all of them..
Apple Airport Extreme Base station, Linksy E4200, WRT610, D-Link DIR-615 etc. All are dual band and supports almost all of the features I have listed. 610 and DIR615 are old routers now.
I use Airport Extreme Base station, Airport express (repeater) combination for main connection and for backup Linksys E4200, Netgear WN2000RP (repeater). Both are working very well. Apple combination has one edge that it can be controlled from any iOS devices (iPAD or iPhone) where as Linksys E4200 supports only iPhone control. No support for Netgear. With both set up I could stream media in my iOS devices or Apple TV or WD-TV Live HUB etc.. smoothly, almost everything I can do wirelessly, printing, storing, backup, my own private cloud (Synology DS 212) which can be accessed from anywhere in the WorldJ
You can visit
www.smallnetbuilder.com for details on routers. As per this site Asus RT-N56 is top performing router which is around Rs8500/-
You can visit my
www.tomymaggie.com for my old technical blogs, not updated the site since June 2011.
Regards,
Tomy