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Do these new 3 radio routers solve repeater b/w issue?

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jvrobert

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I see the latest ac3200 routers have 2 5ghz radios. Does this mean in repeater mode you could get well over 50% bandwidth now?
 
I see the latest ac3200 routers have 2 5ghz radios. Does this mean in repeater mode you could get well over 50% bandwidth now?
The focus of the three-radio design is to group "slow" and "fast" 5 GHz clients for higher total bandwidth. But in the products that support bridging, using one radio for backhaul and another for client connect will prevent the retransmission penalty. But you can do the same thing with any dual-band router that supports wireless bridging.
 
Makes sense, but you'd be stuck using a slower 2.4GHz link for either clients or the backhaul with dual band routers. Seems you could backhaul one of the 5GHz radios and then have both 5GHz and 2.4GHz clients getting full on AC1xxx (1600?) speed from the extender's clients, right?
 
Makes sense, but you'd be stuck using a slower 2.4GHz link for either clients or the backhaul with dual band routers. Seems you could backhaul one of the 5GHz radios and then have both 5GHz and 2.4GHz clients getting full on AC1xxx (1600?) speed from the extender's clients, right?
True. But remember you get the really high throughput from AC only with very strong signals.
 
I don't know about Netgear, but Asus's RT-AC3200 currently does not support Repeater mode. A shame, because yes, in theory, they could use one 5GHz radio to bridge to the other router, and the other 5 GHz could be used then for client connections, providing you the full bandwidth possible on the 5 GHz band.
 
It supports wireless bridge on each radio doesn't it?

It's been a while since I've last tinkered with Media Bridge mode, but if I remember correctly, once a router is configured as a Media Bridge, you can only connect to it through its Ethernet ports. The other wireless radio(s) become unavailable.
 
It's been a while since I've last tinkered with Media Bridge mode, but if I remember correctly, once a router is configured as a Media Bridge, you can only connect to it through its Ethernet ports. The other wireless radio(s) become unavailable.
Ah. thanks.
 
It's been a while since I've last tinkered with Media Bridge mode, but if I remember correctly, once a router is configured as a Media Bridge, you can only connect to it through its Ethernet ports. The other wireless radio(s) become unavailable.

I believe you are correct there...
 
I believe you are correct there...

As the owner of an AC3200, RMerlin is correct: Once the AC3200 is set up in Media Bridge mode, you can only connect other devices to it through its LAN ports.

There's another thread in which I and a couple of other people were just having a discussion about Media Bridge mode; this one fellow (can't recall his name) said that he had gone out and purchased three (3) AC3200's and was going to use one as a router, and the other two as Bridges. My feeling about that was it would be sort of a waste of two of the AC3200's, and you could otherwise accomplish the same thing much cheaper by either buying dedicated bridges, or putting something like AC68's (i.e., 1900ac devices) into bridge mode. As it is, when you use a multi-band router as a bridge, you're not going to be able to use one of the radios, but using an AC3200 means you're unable to use two of the three. Sort of a waste if you ask me.

Yeah, it's a shame that you can't put the AC3200 in repeater mode, but it does not support it (yet). And using an AC3200 as a bridge....well, there are cheaper and just as efficient ways to do that without using an AC3200, IMHO.

BTW, I use the AC3200 as a router (located in an upstairs office/study); I have two AC66U's, one of which I use as a Media Bridge in a downstairs den (to which I have connected an HTPC that I use to stream media files from three NAS's located upstairs, as well as internet streaming of Netflix, Hulu, NBA League Pass, etc.), and another AC66U that I use as a Repeater in a downstairs back bedroom (my wife's office). All of these devices are now running Merlin FW 378.53. Great firmware, and I don't know if Merlin tweaked anything having to do with Bridge Mode, but this iteration seems to work much better and is way more stable than prior versions of Bridge Mode in earlier versions of the FW. Kudos to Merlin.

One more add: The original versions of AsusWRT firmware that allowed one to implement Bridge Mode did not disable the other radio (on a two-band router). In other words you could use the 5ghz band to receive from the router, and you could also still allocate the 2ghz band to use as a "repeater" or "extender", but later versions of Asus's own software did away with that (can't remember the version numbers but it was several years ago). Once you're in Bridge mode, the radios are disabled for all except direct communication with the router and you can't use the Bridge's radios to connect with any client device (other than through the Bridge's LAN ports).

Apparently that is not the case with some other manufacturers, and I've read reports that Linksys routers when operating in bridge mode do not disable the other radio. Never tried one, but apparently other manufacturer's products will allow for both bridging on one band and wireless client connections on the other band not used to establish the bridge.
 
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I don't know if I would recommend using an RT-AC3200 as a bridge - as a router, yes, but as a bridge, it's pretty spendy, and Asus (along with other vendors) have great AC1750/AC1900 class devices that are more suited... in any event, it'll be limited to only one of the three radios - I posed the question, what about bonding the two 5GHz radios, and it was clear that there are technical limitation that would prevent that.

rMerlin stated outright, it's been a while since this was looked at.
 
repeaters are de debil. any of the modes really isn't as good as good ol ethernet and not even as good as wlan to access point/router. best off wiring it as an AP and being done. also with "bridge" modes you can't really do much and it's still capped at 1Gbps.
 
Beyond being spendy as a bridge, you have to think about what your use is, as a bridge. About the only real use I can think of where it could be really nice is if you are using as an an open air bridge and an indoor access point. So you'd do something like run 3 of the antennas outside on pigtails, just for single band 5GHz antennas. Then you can bridge to another access point that is setup similarly. You then have the AC3200 device inside of the structure with the other 3 dual band antennas also inside.

So you have a nice open air bridge between the access points with devices inside connecting.

Otherwise you have the issue of 5GHz having crappy attenuation profile through walls. You'd have to place the access points very close together to make meaningful wireless bridges to also act as repeaters/access points.

Otherwise, you are better off using 2.4GHz as the backhaul and then broadcasting a 5GHz WLAN for devices to connect to. In my limited experience with an AC1200 repeater, attempting to bridge 5GHz to 5GHz (to an AC1750 router) and then broadcasting a 2.4GHz network, the repeater had to be very close to the router for it to make much sense, close enough that it only extended my overall wireless network a small amount. Maybe 15-20% extra coverage.

Doing a 2.4GHz backhaul and then broadcasting a 5GHz network probably gave me 30% extra coverage. This is because I could place the repeater much further with a lot more obstacles in the way than I could when doing a 5GHz backhaul. It is often the backhaul performance that matters more than the broadcasted network performance. In this case, you can often place a repeater/bridge much further with 2.4GHz than you can with 5GHz. There will of course be some times where you could place a 5GHz to 5GHz repeater such that you'd have superior performance than with a 2.4GHz to 5GHz, but you could probably count the number of times/locations/setups on one hand.

I'll grant you I am comparing 2.4GHz 40MHz backhaul to 5GHz 80MHz, but even downgrading the 2.4GHz link to 20MHz, there are a lot of times it makes a lot more sense to use that for a backhaul than 5GHz 80MHz.
 

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