Trying to add 2 wireless routers

MCleveland said:

So I know this thread is pretty old, but I finally picked up the DAP-1522 and wanted to post my results. My wireless speeds on my iPhone went from this: to this: . Needless to say, I'm super excited. Thanks everyone for your help and advice.

This looks much better to me using the DAP-1522 of course, no big surprise there. :)
It's nice to see someone using my advice for hardware purchases with good results.

If your phone and other clients use the 802.11n standard but not 802.11g or below you can switch to the 802.11n Only mode and get much faster connection speeds. If you want even better speeds you can also channel bond by using the 20Mhz-40Mhz setting, but you need good signal strength and clean channels for channel bonding to work as it should.

chev65 said:

This looks much better to me using the DAP-1522 of course, no big surprise there. :)
It's nice to see someone using my advice for hardware purchases with good results.

If your phone and other clients use the 802.11n standard but not 802.11g or below you can switch to the 802.11n Only mode and get much faster connection speeds. If you want even better speeds you can also channel bond by using the 20Mhz-40Mhz setting, but you need good signal strength and clean channels for channel bonding to work as it should.

Yes, it was very good advice. Thanks again. :)

I did this and my speed dropped to about 4Mbps so I changed it back but it's still sitting at 4Mbps. I don't know why it would drop all of a sudden.

MCleveland said:

chev65 said:

This looks much better to me using the DAP-1522 of course, no big surprise there. :)
It's nice to see someone using my advice for hardware purchases with good results.

If your phone and other clients use the 802.11n standard but not 802.11g or below you can switch to the 802.11n Only mode and get much faster connection speeds. If you want even better speeds you can also channel bond by using the 20Mhz-40Mhz setting, but you need good signal strength and clean channels for channel bonding to work as it should.

Yes, it was very good advice. Thanks again. :)

I did this and my speed dropped to about 4Mbps so I changed it back but it's still sitting at 4Mbps. I don't know why it would drop all of a sudden.

It can drop because of the channel overlap from your neighbors when they change channels or the auto channel changers can cause them to move right into your wireless channel range, this is a common problem when using the 2.4 ghz band.

It really pays to scan the wireless connections in your area and find a channel that isn't being used by anyone.

If you have enough free channels you can enable channel bonding for even better speeds but you need a high signal strength for that to work. If you can post the results I can tell you which channels might work best for you.

Xirrus WiFi Inspector is useful for finding the best channels.
Wi-Fi Inspector | Xirrus

Is this the info you need? My DIR-655 is the "Cleveland" at the top of the list and my DAP-1522 is the one below it.

I realize I forgot to yesterday when my dad mentioned it, hah. I have it set with WPA2 and AES now.

I also now changed it to 802.11n Only and 20-40Mhz. I changed the wireless channel to 3 since it wasn't being used by anyone around me. After I let it sit for a bit to make sure all settings were saved, I ran 3 speed tests from my iPhone to compare results again. With the new settings I got:


Definitely better than before, but I still can't figure out why I can't get that 15Mbps speed again.

The channel settings are different than you think.

Single channels span 2 channels in either direction, this is in order to gain bandwidth. So finding a single clear channel isn't really good enough, you need to find an area where the channels don't overlap.

When using channel bonding you are using 2 channels plus 2 other channels either up or down from where you have it set so simply picking one channel that isn't in use doesn't mean it's the best one to use.

The reason the speed fluctuates is because your neighbors are hogging most of the bandwidth and what they are doing at the time also figures into the equation. Because of this, the potential for the wireless speed which is based on available bandwidth is always changing.

You are getting a free lesson on how to optimize a wireless connection and trust me, not many people know how to do this.

InSSider WiFi scanner is better for showing the channel overlap.
inSSIDer – Discover The Wi-Fi Around You | MetaGeek

When you get it all working right and with enough available channels you might see this.

Believe me, I appreciate the help.

So from the looks of it, I want the Yellow Cleveland to be away from all the other networks in order to get the best speeds?

MCleveland said:

Believe me, I appreciate the help.

So from the looks of it, I want the Yellow Cleveland to be away from all the other networks in order to get the best speeds?

This is correct but as you can see this is impossible in an area so crowded with 2.4ghz users.

I must say how ever, it appears as if you achieved the 300mbps maximum speed capable with this router so you really can't do better than this considering how crowded your area is.

If you purchased the D-Link DWA-160 dual band USB NIC you would probably see some slight improvement because you would then be using the 5ghz band which has many more channels and isn't being used by anyone.

The price on these 5ghz NIC's has come down to only 20 bucks "Amazon" because of the new 802.11ac wireless hardware which is out now.

This is all just to just show you the options of your DAP-1522 dual band A/P-Router-bridge.

With 300Mbps you are now on easy street. I can stream multiple HD movies to 4 different wireless machines on my network at the same time, even if it's the same movie and there are no skips are freeze up's at all.

My speeds have been up lately back to the 15Mbps mark. I don't know what changed, but I hope it stays this way. I appreciate all the help. Thanks again! :)