Media bridge and NitroQAM

[Garrett]

I bought the AC5300 and I love it in my apartment. I'm moving to a new house and the living room has a vaulted ceiling which means dropping Ethernet through the attic isn't possible. My TV's wifi is subpar and I stream a lot from my Plex media server and play online games on my PS4. I would consider power line Ethernet but I noticed the potential speeds of wireless AC using NitroQAM over 5GHz which my AC5300 supports. My question is, if I buy a AC3100 which also has NitroQAM, will I be able to leverage the NitroQAM feature if I connect the AC3100 to the AC5300 where the AC3100 acts as a media bridge or will it function at the normal AC speeds in which case I could just buy a AC1900 for the media bridge. The home is a small, single floor one and the two devices wouldn't be far apart. I know I could run Ethernet cables from the office to the living room by hiding it under rugs and such but I'm trying to avoid that if I can. Hopefully someone has already tried this and has some insight to offer but I'm open to all input. Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

1024 QAM requires a very strong signal to work. In my testing, I have never seen a product reach the 2133 Mbps maximum link rate.

To your question, AC5300/5400 and AC3100 routers both support 1024 QAM. The difference is that AC5300/5400 has two 5 GHz radios.

The main benefit you get is more link gain from 4x4 vs. 3x3 radios. You can also get that with AC2600 class products.

 

[Garrett]

Thank you for your response. Do you think going through two sheetrock walls would degrade the signal for 1024QAM? The plan would be to dedicate one 5Ghz radio to the media bridge and the other for general mobile devices.

 

[thiggins]

Do you think going through two sheetrock walls would degrade the signal for 1024QAM?

Yes. Maximum link rate cannot be achieved even with NO walls between and router and bridge sitting 6 feet apart.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...band-gigabit-router-reviewed?showall=&start=3

 

[Garrett]

Since 1024QAM is off the table because I'm sure the signal will have some degradation, what option as a media bridge would play the nicest with the ASUS AC5300 and offer the best realworld throughput going through one to two walls? You mentioned AC2600 but ASUS doesn't make one although I'm open to other vendors as long as they will play nice with my ASUS. I probably shouldn't have posted this in the ASUS forum since we might be discussing other vendors now.

I should note that the intended wired clients on the media bridge would be: TV, home theater receiver, PS4, AppleTV, and Arlo base station. As far as number of ports, I'm not as worried about that as I tend to hoard gigabit switches.

 

[thiggins]

You can still pair it with a 4x4 router, even an AC3100 class. Just don't expect 1024 QAM to work.