New wireless router connected to existing router modem

Question

My home wifi can often get randomly slow and unstable, and I've already upgraded with the only ISP that my town has. I got a deal on a manufacturer refurbished NETGEAR R6300 hoping it'll help. My current router modem is a Dlink 2640b.

Now I'm not sure exactly how to go about it, so I plugged an ethernet cable from my new netgear into the dlink, without doing any form of setup whatsoever. At the moment when I search for wifi, two NETGEAR31 networkss show up along with my already existing SKYnet network like so:

NETGEAR31-5G

NETGEAR31

SKYnet

I've connected to every one and went on speedtest.net, everything seems the same. I can't tell if the NETGEARs more stable or not as the slow/unstable periods are random. Am I doing this right? What real benefits are there to having 3 separate/or same(?) networks to connect to?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

No, you're not doing it right. First, you are limited to the Internet speed available provided by your ISP. No number of networks or a particular router can improve the quality or speed coming in from your ISP connection.

In your case, you've attached the new router to the existing one and are looking for improvement. The same situation exists with this scenario as well. Connected in this fashion, the new router being served by the original router, which results in being limited to the performance of the original router.

If you want to know if the new router will improve speeds in your home, replace the original router with the new one and rerun the speed test. If there are no improvements, you are limited to the speeds your ISP provides regardless of what equipment you place in your home.