Are you looking for a dual band router capable of broadcasting 2.4GHz and 5GHz simultaneously? But you don’t want to spend more than PHP 1,000 (est. US$21)? As usual, CD-R King got you covered with their WR-NET-073-ZI Dual Band 802.11n router.
Specification:
- Inteface:
- 4 x 10/100Mbps LAN Ports
- 1 x 10 / 100Mbps WAN Port
- Power Supply: 9V DC / 0.8A
- Antenna:
- 2 X 4dBi Fixed Antennas (2.4G)
- 2 x 4dBi Fixed Antenna(5G)
- Wireless Standards
- IEEE 802.11a
- IEEE 802.11b
- IEEE802.11g
- IEEE 802.11n
- RF Frequency:
- 2.4GHz
- 5GHz
- Data Rate:
- 2.4GHz up to 300Mbps
- 5GHz: Up to 300Mbps
- Outdoor Power: 20Bm (Max.)
- Price: PHP990
Package
Well, for the price of PHP990, you should’t expect much from the packaging itself. However, it was nice of CD-R king to use eco-friendly packaging for this router.
The router itself is packed inside this foam pouch to protect it from scratches.
And inside, a packaging made of either bamboo or mushroom or cartons is used to contain the router and its accessories. Speaking of accessories… This router comes with one Cat5e ethernet RJ45 cable.
I am not sure if the RoHS sticker signifies that the cable is lead free or the plastic container. Regardless, the cable is short (90 cm long or 2.95276 ft). It’s Cat5e and color white. The thickness of the cable is okay unlike the ones that comes with their cheaper routers that are thin and flimsy.
Performance
WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN
For this testing, we configured the docsis 3.0 modem router to run 5GHz and set it to 802.11n only to assure that it will only perform 300Mbps rate upon transfer. We tested the upload and download speed by transferring one video file from the computer to an Android phone and from the Phone to the computer.
According to the specification, it is capable of 300Mbps (Megabits per second) of transfer rate for both bands (2.4GHz & 5GHz). Just a small backtrack for everyone. 802.11 and 802.11x refers to a family of specifications developed by the IEEE for wireless LAN (WLAN) technology. 802.11 specifies an over-the-air interface between a wireless client and a base station or between two wireless clients. The IEEE accepted the specification in 1997.
Since this router support 802.11 b, 802.11g, 802.11n and 802.11a, here are their definition and differences:
- 802.11a — an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides up to 54-Mbps in the 5GHz band. 802.11a uses an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing encoding scheme rather than FHSS or DSSS.
- 802.11b (also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi) — an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANS and provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1-Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band. 802.11b uses only DSSS. 802.11b was a 1999 ratification to the original 802.11 standard, allowing wireless functionality comparable to Ethernet.
- 802.11g — applies to wireless LANs and is used for transmission over short distances at up to 54-Mbps in the 2.4 GHz bands.
- 802.11n
- 802.11n builds upon previous 802.11 standards by adding multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO). The additional transmitter and receiver antennas allow for increased data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increased range by exploiting the spatial diversity through coding schemes like Alamouti coding. The real speed would be 100 Mbit/s (even 250 Mbit/s in PHY level), and so up to 4-5 times faster than 802.11g.
- Capable of operating in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency band.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t support 802.11ac which is the latest nowadays.
The box states 600Mbps speed but that is not usually the case and it is mostly marketing. They just add up the 300Mbps capability of 2.4GHz and 5GHz to come up with 600Mbps. To really test if this router is true to its specs, we tested the network speed on the 5GHz band to 2.4GHz band to really see if it is really 300Mbps in speed.
Upload
Using an app called AirDroid, this allowed us to trasfer huge files withing the network from a computer to an Android phone. In this upload test, we uploaded a video file (561MB in size) from our computer and this gave us a peak speed of 100Mbps or 12.5MB/s upload rate.
Download
For the download rate, we downloaded the same video file that we upload to our Android phone.
We got a peak of 85Mbps or 10.625MB/s download rate from using the 5GHz 802.11n band.
WAN to WAN
For this test, we configured the router to run both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency band and assured that both bands are on 802.11n only. One device is connected to 2.4GHz while the other is connected to 5GHz. We used an app called WiFi Speed Test, this app allows us to make one end phone as a server while the other phone is our testing device that will transmit data allowing us to test the throughput effectiveness and efficiency of the wireless network coming from this router.
By settings the app and server to receive and transmit a file with 100MB size both ways, we got an average upload speed of 95.2Mbit/s and an average download speed of 89.07Mbit/s. That translates to 11.9MB/s actual upload rate and 11.13375MB/s actual download rate.
The result shows that the router is not even reaching half of the advertised speed of 300Mbps. If we convert that to MegaByte transfer rating, we should expect a transfer speed within the local wireless network of 37.5MB/s.
But on the brighter side, it’s not that bad at all. Having a typical rate speed of 100Mbps within the network is more than enough for the most of us as we don’t even saturate that speed at all for a typical home network. Unless if you are in a consistent need of transferring huge chunk of files within your home network or your internet speed has an asynchronous rate of 15MB/s then you might need a better router but having that kind of internet speed for casual consumers in the Philippines is one hell of a hilarious joke that I can laugh at.
Conclusion
So overall, if you are looking for a 5GHz router for your streaming and gaming needs or you simply want to move away from the congested 2.4GHz band, you might want to consider this router before your start spending some moolah on branded routers that cost as much as PHP3,000+.
Speaking of network performance and throughput rate, I can say that this is by far more than enough for a typical user or home that has an Internet Subscription of not exceeding 10MB/s. In the marketing scheme, that’s about 80Mbps. That shows that even if you have a 50Mbps PLDT Fibr connection, this router can handle as much as that but more than 80Mbps, you are better off having a branded one than this.
The downside of this router is its advertised speed and not having a USB slot so it doesn’t support network printing or USB home network cloud storage. CD-R king says it is capable of 600Mbps but of course I don’t believe that shit and for the most part, it claims that it can perform as fast as 300Mbps for 802.11n, real world scenario is it can only peak at 150Mbps and that is true for 802.11n.
Oh and it supports QoS manual configuration setting that allows you limit the bandwidth of a certain device connected to the router. Example, if you have a 3Mbps internet at home and your brother, father, mother, sister are all streaming videos on youtube giving you a very bad lag while gaming, you can limit the bandwidth of each device. You can set each device to use only 1Mbps and allot the 2Mbps for yourself you selfish bastard.
To break it down to you guys, most routers on the market that uses 802.11n are rated 600 Mbps and those are the routers that can output 2.4GHz and 5 GHz but its real world speed is 150Mbps which is typical for network adapters and the 300 or 600Mbps speeds are attainable when bonding channels with some routers. According to speedguide.net, a pro when it comes to networks and routers, 802.11n can perform as much as 40-50 Mbps typical, varying greatly depending on configuration, whether it is mixed or N-only network, the number of bonded channels, etc. Specifying a channel, and using 40MHz channels can help achieve 70-80Mbps with some newer routers. Up to 100 Mbps achievable with more expensive commercial equipment with 8×8 arrays, gigabit ports, etc.
So there you have it, pretty sure you are thinking that this is cheap and not true as advertised but that should clear your doubts about this router. For me, it’s worth it and better off having one if you are looking to jump the 5GHz wagon and leave the congested 2.4GHz, especially if you are in a location that has neighbors with different routers.