[ekeagle]

Hi everyone,

I need to buy a 5GHz wifi router as the 2.4GHz spectrum is very saturated and almost useless as per neighbor networks.

I want it to also have Gigabit Ethernet (1000Mbps).

I'm checking some cheap used routers and I see R6300v2 at about $41 and R7000 at $80. The only difference seems to be the processor speed.

Even with R6300v2 having internal and R7000 having external antennas both of them would probably cover 25 or 30 meters.

Also despite R6300v2 not having QoS for gaming and streaming out of the box I can install dd-wrt and get the functionalities.

Is all this correct?
Should I pay double the price for a R7000 or would I be ok if I get a cheap R6300v2 instead?

Regards,

[ts57]

Routers with internal antennas don't do distance or walls as well compared to external. I'd only tell you to use internal antenna router for shorter distance with not more than 1 walls in between.

I think internal have equivalent of 3 dbi antennas. External antenna routers come with 3-9 dbi antennas. 3 dbi came with some of the older routers. Newer routers coming with 7 dbi antennas.

With external antennas, you can always swap better ones in easily. I switched my router from 3 dbi to 7 dbi antennas.

For internal, you can search for antenna mod. Usually drill holes to mount external antennas & connect them onto PCB.

With internal antennas, just assume you'll get half the distance of external. Also, you may get some WiFi errors & drop to slower WiFi speeds if distance is too far for the router. ie. I had this happen on E1000 with internal antennas.

For CPU, R6300v2 is dual core Cortex A9 @ 800 MHz. So, very good. You will get QoS when you install DD-WRT firmware.

[sploit]

I sell and test both on Ebay.

Purchase a Asus RT-AC68U instead. Has External Antenna's, and Awesome distance. VPN Speeds are faster too.

Can pick them up for about $60.00 and blows both of them away speed wise. Also they are Kong DDWRT Supported as well as All other Firmware including Tomato, Merlin and AdvancedTomato.