The Main Router Discussion Topic

Non-techies, please bear with me on this. I'm starting a discussion about router technology here which may quickly get hard to follow in places. We have a lot of Techies on these forums, and their knowledge is extremely valuable in solving problems. I'm hoping we can concentrate some of that knowledge here on the key role that wireless routers play in overall system performance and maybe provide some useful information that could help you troubleshoot your own connectivity problems.

I know there's a lot of information and discussions spread all across these Forums about routers. And dwelling on routers frequently gets dissed as just some ruse to ignore the "real" problem. But the router is the piece of gear that is the first and only "point of contact" for most customers' iPhones, tablets, laptops, and you name it. Connect a bad $40 router to a good $600 system and you have a bad $600 system.

I was reminded of this today when I visited a customer's home to figure out why they were having problems with their 1-month-old Gen4 system. Ready to have the whole system ripped out, they were.

Frequent disconnects, buffering, slow page loads, you name it, we've read these same symptoms described in these community forums over and over again.

Plugged a LAN cable into the router, a new, Linksys E1200-NP N300 we installed with the system. Took 30 seconds for a page to load. Bypassed the modem and plugged my laptop directly into the modem, and everything came up immediately.

Traded out the Linksys with a Netgear N300 WNR2000100NAS and that did it. Ran three speed tests and came up with consistent 20 Mbps downloads on a 10 Mbps plan. BTW, this is on Beam 19, one of the most crowded beams on HughesNet's Jupiter platform. Everything normal. Customer reassured.

This isn't the first time we've seen this problem, and I can't stress it enough. Here are a couple of cheap $40 routers, one good - one bad, serving up the business end of several hundred dollars of HughesNet gear. This has to be frustrating to HN Tech Support staff and out of their control, so it's no surprise it would be one of the first things they try to eliminate while troubleshooting and so should you.

I should point out the E1200 is on HughesNet's list of approved routers. But that list can't anticipate some approved routers being bad. Just because a router is listed doesn't mean it's working.

So, let's open this up to some more observations and "Best Practices." I'd be interested in hearing from anyone about their experiences with routers, good and bad, and perhaps we can come up with some ways to help others quickly diagnose router problems, instead of simply "blaming the system." Certainly OK to point to other topics and use this one as a central "jumping off" point.