I have an average sized home in which I have not been able to achieve good overall wireless coverage using a single device, currently an Asus AC68U. I am pretty happy with the AC68U in other respects
Our network at home is small, typically 20 devices connected and most, but not all, are 11ac devices. The wife and kids do a lot of video streaming over wifi, mostly on Apple devices.
My current setup actually consists or 3 WAP's to give decent coverage over the entire house : the AC68U, a TP-Link TD8980 configured as a WAP and I also use homeplug based wireless N WAP to plug a gap in coverage in a bedroom upstairs. It's a bit of a mess but it works......
My TP-Link is unreliable and I will replace it, my default would be to buy an Asus WAP as my main device has been very reliable. I hope my new WAP will eliminate the need for the homeplug devices from my network.
I recently sought advice on another forum around trying to tidy this up and got a strong steer away from consumer based devices like Asus etc and towards low-end enterprise type WAP's like Ubiquiti Unifi and Xclaim xi-3 for better performance.
I would be interested in whether these devices actually offer measurable performance improvements over a good quality consumer device in my kind of application.
For me advanced networking features, quick client connection and the ability to manage many devices and multiple SSID's have no real benefit. It basically comes down to whether the range is better and the transfer speed in a like for like comparison is higher.
I sometimes suspect when one reads reviews people are very keen to justify their buying decisions i.e. more likely to write "I bought this expensive WAP and its briliiant" rather than "I bought this expensive WAP and its not better than my cheaper one"
I have come here for some (hopefully objective) advice.
Cheers!
Chunks
Our network at home is small, typically 20 devices connected and most, but not all, are 11ac devices. The wife and kids do a lot of video streaming over wifi, mostly on Apple devices.
My current setup actually consists or 3 WAP's to give decent coverage over the entire house : the AC68U, a TP-Link TD8980 configured as a WAP and I also use homeplug based wireless N WAP to plug a gap in coverage in a bedroom upstairs. It's a bit of a mess but it works......
My TP-Link is unreliable and I will replace it, my default would be to buy an Asus WAP as my main device has been very reliable. I hope my new WAP will eliminate the need for the homeplug devices from my network.
I recently sought advice on another forum around trying to tidy this up and got a strong steer away from consumer based devices like Asus etc and towards low-end enterprise type WAP's like Ubiquiti Unifi and Xclaim xi-3 for better performance.
I would be interested in whether these devices actually offer measurable performance improvements over a good quality consumer device in my kind of application.
For me advanced networking features, quick client connection and the ability to manage many devices and multiple SSID's have no real benefit. It basically comes down to whether the range is better and the transfer speed in a like for like comparison is higher.
I sometimes suspect when one reads reviews people are very keen to justify their buying decisions i.e. more likely to write "I bought this expensive WAP and its briliiant" rather than "I bought this expensive WAP and its not better than my cheaper one"
I have come here for some (hopefully objective) advice.
Cheers!
Chunks