improve wifi coverage suggestions wanted

[lilstone87]

Well I just ordered a new GT-AX6000 to run as my main router. However I'm looking to add a secondary device, or mesh system to improve my home's wifi coverage. I have done a little looking myself the last 24 hours online. But seems with a lot of the mesh systems I looked at, reliability seems like a common issue. I'm not interested in something that has disconnection issues. So I'm asking here for suggestions, as I feel there's at least a few of you, that have used some of these devices, and can give me some useful feedback.

As for what I'm looking for. I'm trying to improve wifi coverage within my home, and outback(not looking for anything outdoor rated) of my home. Overall talking around 2500-3000sqft. Currently my home has one upstairs room on one end of the house. Which is where the modem, and my new GT-AX6000 will be located. I want to add at least one more device, which would be about 30 feet downstairs, couple walls in between. I can use wifi, or wired for backhaul. I really want to aim to keep most area's of my home capable of 300-500mbps over wifi. I have gigabit internet.

Right now I'm trying to stay under $400 for this upgrade. I'm okay with a mesh system. I was actually looking at the AX92U 2 pack earlier. But I would love if someone here has theses, and can comment on speed/reliability. Anyways I'm open to all suggestions. I just want to be clear the GT-AX6000 will be the main router, any added wifi units will connect to it.

 

[tgl]

The only hard-n-fast recommendation I'd give is to use wired backhaul. There is not enough WiFi spectrum available right now to make wireless backhaul an attractive proposition: it necessarily eats radio bandwidth you'd rather make available to clients. If you're trying to get good-fraction-of-a-gigabit speeds this isn't a point to ignore. (WiFi 6e might fix this, but today that solution will cost you many $$$, and you'd still be better off to spend that money on running some wires.)

I lack enough experience with ASUS' gear to suggest which other models will interoperate the best with a GT-AX6000, but I imagine some other folk here will have opinions about that.

 

[Tech Junky]

Run a cable and use an actual AP. It might cost a little more than these "mesh" systems but, it performs a lot better.

4x4 AP's will have enough power to them to perform well. I use a Zyxel NWA210AX and get 1300sq ft of coverage at full strength. If you're looking for 6E the best option right now is a Netgear WAX630E which will run about $350. This gives you tri-band / 6E. The Zyxel though will come in around $150 or so.

I would start off with an app to measure wifi signals in and around your place though to figure out what kind of interference you might run into from neighbors. Acrylic has an app for your laptop but on your phone any wifi analyzer app will work to measure things.

Pick your channel manually to get the best performance instead of letting things automatically configure as everyone else is doing the same because they don't know better. From the photos I picked channel 8 on 2.4 and 44 on 5ghz based on the surrounding WIFI systems and you can see the signal is stronger than when it would be contending with the default channels 5ghz = channel 36 and 2.4 = 1 / 6 / 11.