Looking to upgrade i38HG router to one that supports Wireless 802.11N

Question

I am currently using a i38HG wireless router and the speeds and availability are minimal when I am using my wireless devices on the second floor of my house. The speeds are around 10 Mbps downstream if it receives a good connection or below 5 Mbps downstream when it has a poor connection, however it is capable of getting 18 Mbps downstream when I am near the router.

I'm looking to upgrade the router to one that supports Wireless Protocol 802.11N and was wondering which routers will support this and how much they will cost to upgrade to?

JefferMC · Answer

The i38HG is actually just a smart access point. Your router is actually on the wall of your home, and is a model number i3812, also known as an iNID.

If you were to upgrade to other equipment, the replacement would be the NVG 589. This would require an AT&T service rep to come remove your iNID and i38HG, put a new NID on your wall, run a cat 5e cable from your NID to where your new RG will be located, and change how any coax fed TV receivers are currently served.

AT&T would likely wish to charge you for this change, probably in the order of $150 or more.

OTOH, you could just get your own wireless router with 802.11n (or even 802.11ac, or maybe dual band) and hook it to the i38HG with a length of Ethernet cable and configure it as an access point as described in post 13 in this thread. It may also be possible to connect it to the Ethernet port of the i3812, if that would be advantageous. There's a bit more setup work to do that.

teckis2000 · Answer

Would this be benificial on our 'legacy' equipment? I would like to do the same thing with a 'smart' router that can have more products use dual band etc. But with the current limits on speed with the 2 wire, is this just a waste of money? Should I contact AT&T to get cat five run with new equipment then use my new router or will it just be the same as using my i38HG/i3812? I am not very tech savy, but we use so many wireless devices in our household that we get bottlenecks that decrease our TV quality (2 roku 3's) and download speeds on our laptops/phones etc. Thanks for any info you can provide.