Asus RT-AC68u or RT-AC3200?

[Ranger]

Hi

I know the advice seems to be to hold off the 3200 devices for now, but I wanted to explain my scenario and get your opinion.

We are about to have fibre internet installed, and can have packages from 50mbps through to 1Gig. This is symmetric, fwiw. Now where the fibre would come in is downstairs in the hall - it is just the best place to do it for a number of reasons. But the main office (PC, NAS) is upstairs. I have a RT-AC68u up there which is a media bridge.

I was considering the 3200 some could have a dedicated 3x3 5Ghz band for the bridge to the office and my MacBook Pro (which is 3x3 I believe). I'd use the other two for the rest of the mobile phones, Apple TV and so on.

I'm assuming I'll end up on the 200mbps package, and I want to make sure that I can get full use of it rather than have a slow device get on the 5Ghz channel and make the wifi become the bottleneck.

My fallback option is to buy another AC68u - I've just got used to the Asus kit and find it intuitive and reliable.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[L&LD]

This would be a good option if you already had another RT-AC3200 (or other router with 3 bands available).

The issue with your setup is that the RT-AC68U will only have a single 5GHz band to use and you won't be able to implement what you seem to be asking for. At least not if some of the other devices also connect to the RT-AC68U, wirelessly.

Otherwise, it seems like you have a solid plan. Just make sure you fully test the new router within the return period before any issues appear and you'd need to RMA instead of just exchanging a defective router which might take weeks, rather than a few hours to get your network back up to speed.