New AX Wifi 6 Router

Sledgstone · December 8, 2020

My old TP-Link AC1750 started to die on me last week after multiple years of perfect use. It started needing a reboot once a day because the internet would completely stop for wired and wireless. After 3 days it needed 2 reboots and thats when we bought a new router. Theres been plenty of routers on sale with black friday lately, but instead of going with netgear I went with TP-Link again because this last router lasted years longer than any other router I've ever owned. My dad got a new AX wifi 6 netgear router off of bestbuy a couple weeks ago but because it was black friday exclusive model there was hardly any reviews for it. Since its been a few weeks alot more negative reviews started popping up on it so decided to stick with TP-Link. We bought the TP-Link AX3000:

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-WiFi-AX3000-Smart-Router/dp/B07YMFZ28Q/

https://www.walmart.com/ip/TP-Link-Archer-AX3000-4-Stream-Dual-Band-Wi-Fi-6-Wireless-Router-Up-to-3-Gbps-Speeds-Powered-by-Intel/100797162

We got it from walmart since its cheaper there for the "deals for days" reduced price during November and December. So far I'm loving this router. Much faster speeds that the AC1750. Everything seemed to connect great to it and my phone gets 80+ mbps connection outside my house almost an acre away. But my nvidia shield seems to have a worse connection to my pc for game streaming with it. I'm not entirely sure why but instead of troubleshooting it any more I decided to finally hard wire my Nvidia Shield with an old cat 5 eithernet 100 foot cable I had. That improved my game streaming to a whole other level. Now when I'm streaming a game from my PC to my living room, its as if I'm playing the game directly on that TV with absolutely no input lag. The connection I'm getting is only 100 mbps between the shield and the PC, but the router has gigabit ports. Turns out I need to upgrade my eithernet cables. I had no idea roughly 5-6 generations of eithernet cables has happened since the last time I bought one. I did not know those cables were advancing like HDMI cables were. I ordered a couple cat 8 cables because they were the same price as the cat 6 on amazon a couple days ago. That should give me a solid 1 gbps connection between the two devices for extra clarity and no more minor pixilation. The only pixilation I was getting was when I play one of the Sonic racing games. It was running 60 fps but the sky was getting some pixilation effects on the tv. This new cable should fix that.

The only other device issue I had was with my laptop. Its an older laptop and it could only ever connect to wifi at 20mhz on 2.4g. Well, my laptop hated this new router. I could only get it to connect to a temporary guest network and it'd only get 7 mbps down and 11 mbps up. The last driver update that wifi adapter got was back in 2011 and it was the best driver for it. So I figure the internal wifi adapter must be dying. The laptop has only usb 2 so I couldn't get a usb 3 wifi adapter. So I spent $13 and bought this:

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Mini-Wireless-Supports-10-9-10-14/dp/B07PB1X4CN/

I plugged it in, installed the driver from the cd the device came with. I haven't used a CD in years. lol. My laptop can now connect to 2.4g or 5g and on either I'm getting 80mbps down now. O_O On 5g I'm getting 110 mbps down and the laptop is no where near the router. O_O I wish I'd have bought this adapter years ago.

BTW, my phone is a Galaxy S20 FE. Since my wifi router is a wifi 6, my wifi on my phone actually has a little 6 next to the icon now. Even on 2.4g connection my phone is connected with AX wifi 6 and its blazing fast.