Even for a high-end device such as the E4200, my home is horror show. The router needs to support three roaming laptops, a roving iPad used for video streaming, a Roku Streaming Player in the kitchen and a wireless N-enabled Blu-Ray player in the family room that streams Netflix movies and other video at 720p resolution. The E4200 has to support all this while stationed in the poorest possible location in the house: my office.
My office is located on the first floor in the very rear of a rambling two-story 1851 New England farm house. Not only is the office not centrally located, but it is surrounded on three sides by the kitchen, laundry room and master bathroom, each of which is filled with plumbing and big metal appliances that can wreak havoc with wireless signals. "That's the worst place to set up a router," warned a Cisco spokesperson, when told of my plans for locating the device. In the real world, however, you can't always choose where to place your router.
The problem with my office, according to Cisco, is that radio waves reflect off metal surfaces, bounce around more before reaching their destination and slow down performance. So what is the biggest problem item in the home when it comes to complaints about wireless performance? According to Cisco, it's a full-length mirror mounted on a nearby wall or door.
Then there's the issue of electrical interference. In my house, the six wireless phones and the microwave can become sources of interference when in use, particularly when positioned too close to the E4200 or other wireless devices.
I've been through three wireless routers, have had my share of problems and would encourage anyone considering cutting the cable service and relying on wireless streaming to test extensively before thumbing your nose at Time Warner, Cox or Comcast. If you can do it inexpensively, hardwiring is always the better alternative. I can't.
Getting started
I tested the E4200 from my office, connecting it to a Westell 7500 DSL modem provided by my ISP. My service has a maximum rated bandwidth of 1Mbps up and 15 Mbps down.
Once you've connected the router, the Cisco Connect installation software takes several minutes to complete the setup, automatically configuring security and assigning a strong password by default. I was up and running in about five minutes. The E4200 has a administration screen, with lots of arcane settings for the more technical user, but most people will never need to see it.
Like other routers in this class, the E4200 offers a guest account that lets you provide Web access for up to ten visitors while protecting devices on your internal network from prying eyes. It also supports a USB-attached hard drive for file sharing or streaming of video stored on a UPnP media server.
How I tested
To test performance, I roamed the house with a MacBook and an iPad and tested video streaming to wireless devices in the adjacent kitchen and upstairs family room as well as on the iPad. I ran tests from four locations, including streaming devices hooked to televisions in the first-floor kitchen and the second-floor family room, both about 25 feet away from the router; and in the first-floor living room and second-floor master bedroom, both about 50 feet away and at the opposite end of the house.
On the iPad, I used Netflix's iPad app to load and stream movies and then ran the performance tests available at speedtest.net. On the MacBook, I ran both Cisco's included performance testing utility, which checks performance between the MacBook and the router, and the Speedtest suite, which extended the performance test out to the Internet, to a Web server 50 miles away. I ran each test at least three times in each location and used the average of all tests.
I then enabled the wireless G functionality on my ISP-provided Westell 7500 DSL modem, ran the same tests and compared the results.
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