ColinTaylor
Part of the Furniture
Apologies in advance for yet another “what router should I buy” post.
I’m currently using an Asus RT-N66U and it’s excellent. It does more or less everything I want. I don’t need Tri-band, Smart Connect, Link Aggregation, AiProtection, NitroQAM, WTFast, Media Server, iTunes, 8 Lan ports, moo-me-mo or any of the other bells and whistles they’re marketing.
However there are 2 things that the N66U lacks which is why I’m looking to replace it.
The first is obvious, 802.11ac support. Actually, I only have 2 laptops with AC cards and they work fine already using just 802.11n.
The second thing is the reason why I’m asking for advice: QOS. With the family using more and more streaming services I now need to prioritise devices with QOS. This works up to a point. That point being that the CPU in the N66U is too weak to keep up with my WAN speed. My WAN is 150Mbps down, soon to be 200Mbps or more. With QOS enabled the router runs out of steam at < 100Mbps.
So I’d like to replace the N66U with an AC-class device that has a processor fast enough to handle QOS (and IPTraffic) at 200Mbps+. My preferred option would be the RT-AC1900 or RT-AC3100 but neither of those is available in the UK. Neither is the RT-AC68 with anything other than an 800MHz processor. The RT-AC88 looks good but is too expensive because it’s loaded with features I don’t care about.
I’d prefer to stick with Asus and Merlin’s firmware but perhaps I should be looking at Netgear instead, R7000?
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
I’m currently using an Asus RT-N66U and it’s excellent. It does more or less everything I want. I don’t need Tri-band, Smart Connect, Link Aggregation, AiProtection, NitroQAM, WTFast, Media Server, iTunes, 8 Lan ports, moo-me-mo or any of the other bells and whistles they’re marketing.
However there are 2 things that the N66U lacks which is why I’m looking to replace it.
The first is obvious, 802.11ac support. Actually, I only have 2 laptops with AC cards and they work fine already using just 802.11n.
The second thing is the reason why I’m asking for advice: QOS. With the family using more and more streaming services I now need to prioritise devices with QOS. This works up to a point. That point being that the CPU in the N66U is too weak to keep up with my WAN speed. My WAN is 150Mbps down, soon to be 200Mbps or more. With QOS enabled the router runs out of steam at < 100Mbps.
So I’d like to replace the N66U with an AC-class device that has a processor fast enough to handle QOS (and IPTraffic) at 200Mbps+. My preferred option would be the RT-AC1900 or RT-AC3100 but neither of those is available in the UK. Neither is the RT-AC68 with anything other than an 800MHz processor. The RT-AC88 looks good but is too expensive because it’s loaded with features I don’t care about.
Code:
RT-AC68 A1/A2: 800MHz BCM4708 - Too slow
RT-AC68 B1/B2/V2/P: 1GHz BCM4709 - Not available in UK
RT-AC68 C1: 1GHz BCM4709C0 - Not available in UK
RT-AC1900: 1.4GHz BCM4709C0 - Not available in UK
RT-AC87: 1 GHz BCM4709A - Bad reputation
RT-AC3200: 1GHz BCM4709A - Unique SDK, Merlin may drop support
RT-AC3100: 1.4GHz - Not available in UK
RT-AC88: 1.4GHz BCM4709C0 - Too expensive
RT-AC5300: 1.4GHz BCM4709C0 - Way too expensive
Your thoughts would be appreciated.