Performance and additional Functionality
Installation – Quick Setup
As you see on above screenshots, you don’t need much to configure your new router. Everything is well described in the manual and I bet that many users won’t even need to open it for anything else than to check default admin login and password. Installation is quick and simple but of course more advanced users will play with additional settings which you can find below.
Advanced Options
I won’t describe obvious functionality of the router as all who are interested in this device already know all of them. There is nothing unusual in the menu. We can set all three bands separately and it’s of course recommended to protect the network with good password/pin.
Router is also letting to check what devices are connected and is showing network names what is typical for higher series routers. There are also additional options regarding guest network or connected USB devices. What more, router can work as print server if we connect printer. It’s great as we are saving space and money on additional device.
From other settings we can set network availability and rules based on task schedule or set profiles in parental controls tab.
Performance
Performance was tested in CrystalDiskMark as it lets to test mapped network drives. All tests were performed on ASUS GL552VW laptop and mapped drive was on Dell R430 server. Of course everything was connected to TP-Link Archer C3200.
Results are highly affected by area of tests, walls thickness and additional devices. Our tests were performed in quite old building where are thick walls but all devices were in the same room. Additional signal tests were performed on three floors ( office environment ) and signal was good on all of them.
At the beginning we will see how local network connection works using 1Gbit ports.
Maximum bandwidth is close to maximum available on these ports. We could achieve 118.5MB/s what is a great result. Similar results were on larger and smaller files. At the same time random access test is also showing high performance.
In second test used was used wireless connection marked as 5GHz-1. However 5GHz-2 is giving about the same results so I will show only one screenshot.
There are some differences between runs but maximum bandwidth can reach 65MB/s what is really good for WiFi connection. At the same time more complicated read/write operations like random access is much faster than on regular routers.
This connection is dedicated for gaming and more demanding work while 2.4GHz band is designed for additional devices which can’t use faster bandwidth.
Results on mentioned 2.4GHz are below.
As we see, bandwidth in CrystalDiskMark is much lower than on 5GHz connection and this is what you can expect on most standard routers. Of course it’s more than enough for many devices or even good to play online games but of course faster is better.
Signal was good during all tests and we haven’t seen any disconnections. Simply perfect performance and if so high data packages are passing without issues then I think that all gamers will be satisfied from TP-Link Archer C3200.
1 comment
Just tried this and it was exactly what I needed. Thank you for this article. I am looking forward to similar ones that are informative and helpful on a daily basis.