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Wow, I can't imagine being in your shoes at all. I would immediately go to the store and get a cheap semi-modern router for $50 to get my full ISP speeds, espec

Wow, I can't imagine being in your shoes at all. I would immediately go to the store and get a cheap semi-modern router for $50 to get my full ISP speeds, especially when missing 2/3 of it. Even a 10 year old 802.11n AP ought to be able to get you 50mbps at reasonable range.

war1025 6y ago
I probably should get a new router. It's sort of become low priority. The main signal issue is that our router is in the garage next to where our internet comes in. For a few weeks in the spring I was looking at setting up a wired network since all the phone jacks in our house are actually Cat5e cable that could be upgraded to ethernet jacks pretty easily. But then I also lost ambition for that idea. I did spend $20 a couple months ago to get a latest-generation wifi chip for my laptop, which I'd recommend to anyone since it's a trivial thing to upgrade and I never even realized the wifi chips were swapable. That improved my network speed by a factor of two I think.
- war1025 6y ago
  For the record in case anyone goes back this far in the comments, this exchange did finally push me over the edge and I ordered a new router.
rectang 6y ago
For most non-techies, buying a router means hours of fiddling with an inscrutable setup ending in failure, then either giving up, or if you can afford it paying the Geek Squad to set things up for you. The advice I give most people is to use whatever the ISP provides, so that when things go south the ISP is on the hook for support.
- Groxx 6y ago
  +1 here. Routers are absurdly more complicated, hard to fix, and full of brand new terminology to deal with than basically any other piece of normal house tech. Most should absolutely stick with their ISP's, as crappy as most of those devices are.
c0nsumer 6y ago
It may also be the cable modem. It's not uncommon at all for folks who own their own modems to have something that's so old spec that when they upgrade their service they don't get the speeds they are paying for. I had this happen... Bumped to 500/50 with Wide Open West and immediately went "...oh" then grabbed a new modem.

war1025 6y ago

I probably should get a new router. It's sort of become low priority. The main signal issue is that our router is in the garage next to where our internet comes in. For a few weeks in the spring I was looking at setting up a wired network since all the phone jacks in our house are actually Cat5e cable that could be upgraded to ethernet jacks pretty easily. But then I also lost ambition for that idea. I did spend $20 a couple months ago to get a latest-generation wifi chip for my laptop, which I'd recommend to anyone since it's a trivial thing to upgrade and I never even realized the wifi chips were swapable. That improved my network speed by a factor of two I think.

war1025 6y ago
For the record in case anyone goes back this far in the comments, this exchange did finally push me over the edge and I ordered a new router.

rectang 6y ago

For most non-techies, buying a router means hours of fiddling with an inscrutable setup ending in failure, then either giving up, or if you can afford it paying the Geek Squad to set things up for you. The advice I give most people is to use whatever the ISP provides, so that when things go south the ISP is on the hook for support.

Groxx 6y ago
+1 here. Routers are absurdly more complicated, hard to fix, and full of brand new terminology to deal with than basically any other piece of normal house tech. Most should absolutely stick with their ISP's, as crappy as most of those devices are.

c0nsumer 6y ago

It may also be the cable modem. It's not uncommon at all for folks who own their own modems to have something that's so old spec that when they upgrade their service they don't get the speeds they are paying for. I had this happen... Bumped to 500/50 with Wide Open West and immediately went "...oh" then grabbed a new modem.