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Newbie can't decide between Asus AC87U or AC68U

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NSQ13

New Around Here
I would truly appreciate any assistance.

A few things first:
1. I live in a condo in a high congested downtown area filled with other condos and over five other ones being built. Not to mention a number of very large office buildings.
2. I can only place my router on a desk beside my current modem/router which I got from my ISP (they are separated by a printer and I can only do this with the AC68U obviously) on the top of my bookshelf or (my desk is old) in my desk where the CPU of a computer used to go. I can also try and have it on my desk itself. (Living with a significant other who is very picky about the way our rooms look isn't easy.)
3. My main concern is 1. Range 2. Speed 3. Being able to connect to a VPN directly through the router (I understand this will take a speed hit).
4. I plan on flashing either one with Asuswrt-Merlin as I've never flashed a router before and this seems to be the easiest way to flash a router. ( I really don't want to pay more than double for a pre-flashed router.)

Given my criteria and needs, can anyone give me some suggestions?

I know very little about routers and for some reason I have been very picky (I swear my significant other is rubbing off on me) on making sure I get one that is right for me instead of just making a random choice.

I'd also be open to other routers as well that fit my criteria.

Thanks in advance and I truly appreciate the help.
 
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if the AC87U has MU-MIMO working and you have such devices than go with it otherwise go with the AC68U. How much VPN throughput are you expecting and what VPN type are you using? Whats your internet speed?
 
I don't think it supports MU-MIMO yet, and by the time it does I think this router will cost significantly less. But my understanding is that there are currently no network adaptors that support it.

Not entirely sure what VPN throughput is, so I can't answer that question. If it means what I think it means, then anywhere from 30-50 Mbps when I'm using a wired connection and around 10-15 Mbps when I'm using a Wi-Fi connection in my room.I'm using PIA using their app and switching to Viscosity at times.

With no VPN and an ethernet connection I get 100+Mbps. When I'm in my room where the router is I get anywhere from 50-100 and I get about the same in the living room. There are times when it hover between 20 when I leave my room. There are times when I'll barely get 10Mbps when I'm using Wi-Fi and no VPN when I leave my room. It's honestly seems to be completely arbitrary.

Biggest problem is my signal on my iPhone and iPad greatly diminish when I leave the room. It basically becomes a dead zone if I leave my room.
 
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im not very clear on what you were saying exactly.
Your internet speed is the speed your ISP speed in Mb/s or Gb/s depending where you are. When you applied for internet this information should be given or what you basically applied for.

VPN throughput is the speed at which you want VPN to function. Different types of VPN perform differently and have different securities and compatibilities.
PPTP VPN is the least secure but the ARM A9 based router can perform up to 100Mb/s of this
SSTP VPN is more secure but the same router will perform it in 20Mb/s or less due to encryption
L2TP/IPSEC is even more secure but without hardware acceleration the router could end up doing a few Mb/s even for the ARM A9. Hardware acceleration for this is only available on specific routers such as cisco RV series, recent mikrotik PPC and TILE based routerboards. X86 with hardware encryption will also be fast for this.
OpenVPN is software based that is new and the least compatible. It requires both the client and server to have the VPN software installed (ASUS routers already have it installed) and still has performance issues so dont expect much.

Basically for ARM A9 (approx)
PPTP - up to 100Mb/s
SSTP - less than 20Mb/s
L2TP+IPSEC - less than 30Mb/s or even lower
OpenVPN - 20Mb/s or less.

Overclocking does increase throughput. If you need anymore throughput i would suggest using an x86 with encryption based router like pfsense or certain mikrotik routerboards or even other routers that use the same hardware cisco RVs do. I would not suggest cisco RVs due to relaibility reasons. X86 CPUs that have hardware encryption will usually state it in their specs which for intel is right at the bottom of the processor's page.

if you arent using VPN on your router than you do not need to worry about this. ARM A9 based routers will do software NAT up to 500Mb/s overclocked but up to 2Gb/s hardware NAT so it really depends on your internet speed and features you want to use.
 
4. I plan on flashing either one with Asuswrt-Merlin as I've never flashed a router before and this seems to be the easiest way to flash a router. ( I really don't want to pay more than double for a pre-flashed router.)

Is someone selling routers pre-flashed with my firmware?
 
You can bet they do on ebay along with counterfeit items..

I was curious since there are legitimate businesses that do so. MyOpenRouter sells routers pre-flashed with Tomato or DD-WRT. I just never heard of any of these doing so with my firmware.
 
I was curious since there are legitimate businesses that do so. MyOpenRouter sells routers pre-flashed with Tomato or DD-WRT. I just never heard of any of these doing so with my firmware.
You're right they should since your firmware is also opensourced but with some closed sourced binaries. DD-WRT isnt entirely open sourced either. Still i always suggest people to try your firmware over stock. With so many routers having the same hardware your firmware could be ported over to them too and you could end up having routers sold preflashed with your firmware if you manage it.

Having a full linux router is handy and your firmware does it while keeping the stock performance.
 
Having a full linux router is handy and your firmware does it while keeping the stock performance.

I'm not making it any "fuller" Linux than the stock firmware. I mostly made config files customization, and added a few user script hooks for people who wanted to customize it even further, such as firewall rules. It's still the same monolithic firmware where almost everything is handled by rc (which runs as the init process).
 
I'm not making it any "fuller" Linux than the stock firmware. I mostly made config files customization, and added a few user script hooks for people who wanted to customize it even further, such as firewall rules. It's still the same monolithic firmware where almost everything is handled by rc (which runs as the init process).
The stock firmware doesnt let you access the linux part of it easily or even write to some parts. But the configurable firewall is a nice touch that makes it a bit like mikrotik routerOS.
 

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