AC68 bridge/extender

[funkahdafi]

Hi there,

I am moving to a new place soon where I won't be able to properly put cables everywhere. So I am looking at AC Wifi to bridge my living room equipment to the router in my office.

I would get two Asus AC68U, put one in the office as main wlan router and the other one in the iiving room.

Now if I put the living room AC68U into bridge mode, will wireless clients also be able to connect to that router? Or will bridge mode only allow clients on the router's ethernet ports?

It would be nice to extend wlan coverage but I want to avoid repeater mode, as that supposedly has a bad impact on overall performance. Any other ideas? What's your advise?

Thanks!

 

[ColinTaylor]

As I understand it the AC68U that is in bridge mode can only have wired devices connected to it.

As you say, if you use repeater mode you will be halving the bandwidth between to two devices (as well as creating other problems).

If possible, I would suggest that you connect the two locations with a couple of powerline adapters and put the second AC68U into access point mode.

 

[funkahdafi]

Powerline.... interesting. Haven't thought about that yet. Is Powerline able to keep up with AC bandwidth?

You know, I could live with the AC68U wired only client bridge mode, after all the place is not huge and the AC68U in the office should be sufficient to bring WLAN into every last corner. However, it feels like a waste.

Can the bridge mode be configured that l can use 802.11ac for the actual bridge (plus wired clients) and still have a WLAN AP in the 802.11n 2,4 ghz band?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Powerline.... interesting. Haven't thought about that yet. Is Powerline able to keep up with AC bandwidth?

Good point. I use 500Mb powerline adapters to link an AP at one end of my house to my router at the opposite end. The actual link speed at that distance is about 130Mb, but it's consistent and reliable unlike the wireless reception. So whilst it's lower than 802.11ac's theoretical 1300Mbps, in reality I can't achieve anything like that with wireless.

You know, I could live with the AC68U wired only client bridge mode, after all the place is not huge and the AC68U in the office should be sufficient to bring WLAN into every last corner. However, it feels like a waste.

Maybe just get one AC68U to begin with and see what the coverage is like.

Can the bridge mode be configured that l can use 802.11ac for the actual bridge (plus wired clients) and still have a WLAN AP in the 802.11n 2,4 ghz band?

I don't know. Hopefully someone else will answer this.

 

[funkahdafi]

Allright. I am going to investigate Powerline, but I think I will just end up with one Asus in the office and another one on the living room in bridge mode.

Now if Asus would only bring on that new AC87U already

Thanks for your input, appreciated!

 

[KKLD]

Can the bridge mode be configured that l can use 802.11ac for the actual bridge (plus wired clients) and still have a WLAN AP in the 802.11n 2,4 ghz band?

I think I understand what you're asking.

I have one AC68U as my main router, directly connected to my modem, it has two networks, a 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz. In the other end of my house I have an AC66U set up in repeater mode (for the 5 GHz network). The AC66U also has two networks (and 4 working LAN ports), the repeated 5 GHz network and a 2.4 GHz network. Clients on both networks can switch between them as they wish (they have identical names, encryptions and passwords). With -65 dbm range I tested a file transfer to a device connected to the LAN port and got about 350 upload and 300 download. Hope this helps.

But funnily enough, the only problem I have with this serup is, that devices, for some reason, cannot roam between the two routers on the 5 GHz band, 2.4 GHz works flawlessly, maybe someone knows why?

 

[ColinTaylor]

In the other end of my house I have an AC66U set up in repeater mode (for the 5 GHz network).

He's talking about bridge mode not repeater mode.

 

[funkahdafi]

Still interesting information, thanks KKLD. Maybe the same can be done in bridge mode. I will see. I will play around once I bought them.