wireless router min operating system requirements?
 

Does anyone know why there are minimum operating system requirements for PCs to be connected to a wireless router? For example the TP-LINK Archer C60 Wireless Cable & Fibre Router - AC 1350, Dual-band says Win7 or later. What happens if a WinXP machine with a wireless card attempts to connect to it?

Background to this....

We have upgraded our ISP and have a faster broadband than we had before and this is supported by a new wireless modem/router. This has caused a few hiccups and wireless signal strengths, in some areas of the property, have fallen and access speeds are slower than before!

In addition, the new modem is less tolerant of me using a plug in telephone extension lead to shift the modem/router to the other corner of the building to give me better wireless connection to my workshop (wooden outbuilding to the rear of the premises). The broadband had been dropping out and a telecoms engineer suggested I move the modem back really close to the incoming telephone point and then either use a long ethernet cable or plugin "through the mains" network adaptors to get a fast signal to the rear of the main building. I did this and the drop outs have stopped but when I plugged in my old Netgear wireless router everything connects but it all runs a bit slowly. A look at the spec shows why, the Netgear MR314 is good for a combined throughput of just 11Mbs. Running around the premises with a laptop PC shows 37Mbs at the ethernet cable going into the Netgear but only 3.6Mbs coming out of any of the wired or wirelss connections. Going near to the new router I see the full 37Mbs over it's wireless link.

Thanks,

Andrew.

The simple answer is that communications protocols and frequency bands have changed as wireless modems have evolved to provide faster connections. Older PCs will still work, but the data transfer speeds will be very slow by comparison to more up to date kit.

Older wireless systems using 2.4 GHz frequencies have a bit more range and signal penetration than the current 5 GHz systems. So you get blisteringly fast transfer speeds with the newest kit while relatively near the modem, but equipment further away that previously worked fine, may simply be unable to connect.

There are various range extenders and antennas available to help in these situations and sometimes simply resiting or elevating the modem higher works too. Mine is sited on top of the kitchen cupboards and on a good day I can get a connection in the neighbouring street.

On the specifications page for the device you mention, XP is actually explicitly supported: AC1350 Wireless Dual Band Router - TP-Link (right at the bottom of the page).

I suspect it may be down to any bundled software or setup applications that have only been tested with currently supported OSs - and recall that support for XP ended some years ago.

SD

Rans, try plugging you XP computer network socket straight into the powerline extender socket ie don't even use the MR314. That would show you if it was the MR314 or the XP computer. If it's the MR314 that is slow, you can buy cheap network extenders (not routers, per se) that plug into the powerline adapter Ethernet socket. I have one and it works well: full speed wifi at the other end of the house.

"High speed broadband" (anything much above 4-5Mb) usually won't take telephone extension cables - at best you get severly reduced performance but usually they just won't synch at all. If you have wifi range problems at the opposite end of the house then either run an ethernet cable to a second Wireless Access Point (WAP) or use a decent Powerline system to run the signal to other WAPs. "WAPs" are just wifi routers/switches and can be either specific products or tweaked routers. WHen we upgraded to fibre internet I reconfigured the original router to be a WAP (you can find pages of advice on how to do this on the interwebs), but as my home is two 200year-old cottages knocked together the walls are mostly flint which is wifi-opaque. So I've just put poweline WAPs in almost every room (each with a different SSID) and devices just "roam" between them.

PDR

I suspect Saab Dastard has hit the nail on the head wrt what it was tested on by the supplier, that's a big part of the reason we specify supported OS etc. for our product

Thanks for all the helpful advice/info here. Sorry if I confused a little, I didn't want to buy the wireless router I used as an example (actually it is out of stock at the outlet I would have used), I just wanted to understand the relevance of OS requirements when listed in router specs. On balance, it is probably something to do with router setup files being either on CD/DVD or for web download only having been tested on later OSs. As I have a Win8 machine to do the setup I won't worry about using WinXP machines through the new router, it will be here on Monday.

Just for info I decided to test the various ways of getting the signals around the property. I have 6 Powerline adaptors, not the latest and greatest generation but serviceable. Several are in use getting internet access to a hard disk freeview recorder, getting access to a couple of networked printers scattered about and, initially, getting my Netgear wireless router connected to the incoming router. When I only got 3.6Mbs through the Netgear router I assumed that the Powerline adaptor link was not working well as it is across different circuits/fuses. When I replaced the Powerline adaptors with a 15 meter ethernet cable I was a little surprised to find that it did nothing to improve the data rate through the Netgear. Today, I tried using the Powerline adaptors to connect the incoming router to the location of the Netgear but plugged the Powerline directly into a fast laptop. The speedtest came in at 12Mbs, not too bad but a long way short of the 37Mbs I get using the cable to do the link. The Powerline adaptors won't work from the house ring out to my external workshop which is powered from the garage ring circuit from the main fusebox. Now I understand the speeds of data I can get through the various links I can figure out the best way of getting everything connected to get the speeds where they are needed.

Unless you're connecting to a router via USB (where drivers are required) I very much doubt the router cares which OS you're using as all the configuration and firmware upload is via a browser based interface. And wireless is wireless, it's meant to be platform agnostic.