It depends what you are comparing to. I’ve run into customers with the new Belkin designed Linksys AC1750 routers that couldn’t reach 2 rooms away and replaced it with a 951G and it beat the pants off the Belksys.
One other factor is my customers are rural and often cannot see a single other SSID, but need range. So giving them a single band 2.4 GHz router often solves problems. iPhones seem to think one bar at 5 GHz is better than five bars at 2.4 GHz. And we all know you get better range in a 20 MHz channel than an 80 MHz channel, but router manufacturers don’t seem to know that. I will say the hAP AC is probably not very competitive at its price point. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Joe Novak Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 4:36 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" Honestly I find the wireless performance underwhelming on the Mikrotik devices with integrated antennas. On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Nate Burke <n...@blastcomm.com <mailto:n...@blastcomm.com> > wrote: I think customers for the most part still associate 'big' and 'heavy' with Quality. I was just a customers house this week where he took out a 951 I was providing (for free) to put in a giant linksys $300 router. But now he says his wifi works down the street and around the corner. I find that hard to believe, but it's physically much bigger than the 951, so it must be much better... Maybe we should start going back to like 8 pound power bricks the size of a desktop computer. Then our internet would be better than comcast. On 10/15/2016 3:11 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: Pretty much the same here. Lease a managed router from us for $5/month, or if you buy one at the store head for the $70 to $100 price range. Less they probably cut corners, more and you’re probably wasting money. Our leased routers are Mikrotik 951G, we just got some hAP AC in to consider as a dual band AC solution. We like the ability to manage the Mikrotik routers but they don’t really give us a solution for customers who want a fancy router, or to take management to the next level (application level QoS, customer dashboard). The answer for that is probably Calix, but our customer base mostly shops at WalMart and Dollar General, I’m not sure we have enough demand for a Calix class router. There are a few who would want something like that, but it’s probably well under 5%, unless we subsidize them. I only push the leased routers so hard, actually I think it’s a better deal for the customer than for us, if they want to buy a router and hope it lasts 5 years they are welcome to. Unfortunately this means the people taking the leased router may be the people who just don’t have the money to buy a router we’ll be shutting them off for nonpayment in a couple months and trying to get our router back. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Joe Novak Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 1:31 PM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" What are you recommending on routers now Ken? Our spiel usually includes netgear and spend no more then 100$. Especially for the people on the 3mbit and 5mbit plans. We've been doing good at converting these people that don't want to mess with it to our rental router. (Zyxel 2.4ghz) for 5/month. On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 1:23 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> > wrote: I’m still waiting to run into a customer with a media library to justify the $400 WiFi router some kid in the store sold them so they could have multigigabit WiFi in their house. Cuz if your only source of content is your 25 Mbps Internet connection, I’m missing why you need that AC5300 router. And honestly, if I had a media center with locally stored content streaming 4K video around the house, I’d figure a way to run a cable to the big screens. Why spend all that money and then cheap out by using WiFi, especially since that 60 inch TV isn’t exactly portable unless it’s on wheels. From: Af [mailto: <mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com> af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Joe Novak Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 1:09 PM To: <mailto:af@afmug.com> af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" It makes me sad that Kodi got associated with all of the nonsense. It's a beautiful media center front end. I actually just got a 'NexBox' in that runs android, outputs 4K, which I can't do with my current media center setup. I've been excited to play around with it. On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Ken Hohhof < <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> af...@kwisp.com> wrote: And the people with the Kodi boxes, usually the people who barely know how to use a computer, are they answering ads in the back of magazines or something? They seem to expect something like the analog TV converter boxes, you plug it in and get free live TV. Must be legal because I bought a box. And for tech support, call your ISP. From: Af [mailto: <mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com> af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of That One Guy /sarcasm Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 12:54 PM To: <mailto:af@afmug.com> af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" Don't forget these rooted amazon firesticks are dominating right now. I won't offer any support for any issue unless it's a vanilla stick. These things are blatantly illegal like the black box descramblers for satellite days. People are dropping malicious operating systems in the middle of their trusted network left and right for "free" tv. God only knows what iot bot net activity is also causing their xhamster buffering On Oct 15, 2016 12:48 PM, "Chuck McCown" < <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> ch...@wbmfg.com> wrote: I read the word “Netflix” and my brain received “Netscape”. Talk about a confusing moment... From: CBB - Jay Fuller Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 11:33 AM To: <mailto:af@afmug.com> af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" I have a smart tv that works fine but won't update. It is an earlier Netflix interface but I actually like it better than the modern interface..... Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone ----- Reply message ----- From: "Ken Hohhof" < <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> af...@kwisp.com> To: < <mailto:af@afmug.com> af@afmug.com> Subject: [AFMUG] "buffering" Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2016 12:10 PM In your experience, does it help if the customer goes through the procedure to update the app on the smart TV? Most of the smart TVs we run into seem to be Samsung. I know a lot of the early ones also didn’t seem to play well with certain WiFi routers. From: Af [mailto: <mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com> af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Joe Novak Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 11:59 AM To: <mailto:af@afmug.com> af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" In a lot of the early smart TVs - even some of the new ones - the netflix 'smart' modulation did not work well if at all. The Roku's and streaming boxes usually have perfect support for it. Hulu seems to do good too. Direct TV has shit poor bandwidth management, and poor peering as far as we could tell. On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof < <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> af...@kwisp.com> wrote: The most recent customer I think I’ve gotten to clarify the video is actually stopping and starting. Previously he was saying it took a long time to buffer but was fine once the picture appeared. That’s what got me to thinking the latest complaint was impatience with how long it took before the video started playing, not problems while it was playing. The next challenge is to find out what streaming service he is using, people tend to call them all “Netflix”. But I rarely hear about Netflix stopping to buffer because Netflix can switch stream rates on the fly, if it’s actually Netflix and it is stopping and starting, in my experience it’s usually something other than just slow Internet. Like WiFi dropping out, or packet loss, or a Windows 10 download overloading the connection. We have transitioned to the point where people sit down in front of their “smart TV” and expect to watch TV, who knows what streaming service, but there is only one answer if it doesn’t work like old fashioned TV – your Internet is too slow. I had a customer call because she couldn’t watch an online class on her computer which was telling her “you are not connected to a network”, and there was an airplane symbol in the lower right. Tech support for the online college told her that meant her Internet was too slow. I was tempted to tell her the airplane symbol actually meant her Internet was really fast (it’s flying), otherwise it would show a car or a turtle. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 10:29 AM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" I presume the circle thing is spinning when people say buffering. From: Ken Hohhof Sent: Friday, October 14, 2016 8:34 PM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m wondering if when a customer talks about “buffering”, he really means having to wait for the video to start playing. And maybe I’m confused because I assume everyone is using Netflix. And I’m pretty sure Netflix starts the stream at a low quality so it starts quickly, and then ramps up the quality as the buffer fills, since their technology allows changing the stream quality on the fly. Other services like maybe Hulu and Amazon Prime may behave differently. Also with my default assumption that people are using Netflix, I don’t expect rebuffering because it’s been years since Netflix needed to stop and rebuffer at a lower stream rate, I think they do that pretty seamlessly now. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mathew Howard Sent: Friday, October 14, 2016 9:09 PM To: af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] "buffering" Well, people certainly want connections that support multiple streams. Paying for it, I'm not so sure about... at least around these parts. On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuh...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.kuh...@gmail.com> > wrote: Have you ever seen a 1080p youtube video load on a 1GbE active-E FTTH ISP that has direct peering with Google from a router 2.5ms upstream? It's a beautiful thing. People will absolutely pay for connections that support multiple streams, take a typical family of 4 or 5 people with kids that want to watch videos on tablets simultaneously... On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 6:49 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> > wrote: When people say their video is “buffering”, I assume they mean re-buffering, where the video stops and starts. I’m starting to wonder if some people are referring to the delay before the video starts playing. Is this a thing? And do people pay for faster Internet just to make the video start faster, like cut 15-20 seconds down to 5 or 10 seconds?
