Should I use WPA? I can't connect to Internet!

Lesson #!. Be sure you don't have a splitter or extender fitting to join or extend your coaxial cable.

I am still using an old Belkin pre-N that only connected to N when using a Belkin NIC so basically it is a G. It has been a great G router. It started giving me fits on disconnects and then stopped connecting to the Internet completely despite having a local network connection working.

So I proceeded with a marathon of unplugging, hard reset, restore default, flushing this and that. Nothing worked so I connected to the modem directly and ordered the latest/greatest Asus RT-N56U (OK, I wanted one anyway).

If you need the RT-N56U utility try here and look for a file like this: UT_RT_N56U_4218.zip (the final number will change with version and firmware you are using).

I finally gave up and left the router unplugged over night. You guessed it. It worked in the morning. I'm guessing it took longer to clear the memory than I was giving it (or maybe not). I get a new router by default so win/win and I will have a backup router.

Started having fits again. Seems it was a simple but faulty joint for extending the coaxial cable. So fine, I will put my modem six inches from base board. Joints and splitters are never a good thing for coaxial cable. It worked for four years but not now.

I had been running WPA even though I hated the reduced speed. I decided to reevaluate the security/speed issue.

Without WPA

With WPA

Do I really value security that much? No. I am in a gated community and see two other connections weakly so how much risk do I really have?

So I decided to turn off broadcast and use MAC filtering. Something I should have done long ago. My speeds are back up. Hopefully Mrs. Johnson and her Paradise ssid is not a closet hacker.

Perhaps my shiny new Asus will be fast enough to not be adversely affected by WPA2. We shall see. If not, I will avoid WPA security, I am liking the MAC filtering.

Asus RTN56U With WPA2

Looks like the RTN56U does as well with WPA as the old Belkin did without. The speed was little different without WPA. Other testing does show my N speeds between 150/300 but download speeds are not much improved. My modem is Motorola SB5120. Maybe SB6120 would help. I've read mixed but impressive things about SB6120 on Comcast in some areas. I have one on a self in the frozen North and plan on showing it some sunshine.

I changed the admin password and could not log on so had to hard reset. Haven't tried it again yet. Maybe I put in a wrong password twice during setup. There is no obvious way to change the admin user name that I have seen ... peculiar. 

Hard reset finally worked this way: With power connected press the reset button for 10 seconds. Release the button and remove power for a minute. Power up.

The USB drive support is interesting. During setup I received an error that indicated an Asus server was not possible but it worked anyway. Not sure what happened or what I did. Again guilty of trying settings without documentation.

How about a New SB-6120 cable modem? In my area we do not have DOCSIS 3 so I see little or no improvement. SB-5120 is just as good.

One interesting thing, my wifi speed is better than my cabled speed. I assume this is due to the Realtek NIC adapter on my Asrock/AMD desktop. I should hook up my laptop hard wire and check. So here is the hard wire result now:

Looks like time to order a $30 Intel PCI-NIC. I will have to add $30 to the price when considering an Asrock motherboard from now on.

So, I bought an Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Network Adapter 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express (I finally found use for PCI-Express) but it gave little if any speed increase. My Wireless constantly beats my hard wire speed. I had tried Auslogics Internet Optimizer 2.0.6 before trying to evaluate my speeds and possibly it set something wrong. I could have been too harsh on the Realtek NIC.