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Four person WFH new router

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s9PZB2mMsGmNU6

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Hi all,
I have been reading this super informative forum for a few days and finally decided to just ask my query. My situation is:
  • Internet: 350 Mbps down, 35 Mbps up (rising to 500 Mbps in a few months)
  • 4 people working from home, each with one work computer, one personal computer and one mobile phone
  • All in ~20 wireless devices (including chromecast and games consoles) in the house, no IoT and probably not about to start
  • Current router is a Fritzbox 3490 which has been super reliable up to now. We have a seperate modem from the ISP.
  • All devices are on 5Ghz Wifi except for two computers where it was practical to just wire them to the router.
  • House is a two storey terrace, ~1050 sq ft. 3/5 square footage downstairs, 2/5 upstairs
  • Router is located in the middle of the ground floor
I have started noticing some flakiness especially when all of us are working and hammering the bandwidth so have started shopping for a replacement router. We have a couple of devices with AX200/AX201 now as well so a Wifi 6 router makes sense. Narrowing it down, I like the idea of the Asus routers which are Merlin capable though I am open to any suggestions.
In the UK these are current prices:
  • ASUS RT-AX56U £99
  • ASUS RT-AX58U £175
  • ASUS RT-AX82U (no Merlin (yet?)) £180
  • ASUS RT-AX86U £230
Mainly, for my setup is the AX56U enough? Is the AX86U worth the 2.3x price versus the AX56U? Or is the middle AX58U a sweet spot? I am also aware CES is ongoing so there may be more devices imminent.
 
I just evaluated an RT-AX56U for a customer and found it grossly wanting. Not even Media Bridge mode to alleviate some of the cost once their budget included a more capable router in the near future.

The RT-AX58U is easily recommended over the RT-AX56U.

At that 'base' price level, the RT-AX86U is looking a lot more desirable and yes, it is easily worth the price difference, particularly for your ISP speeds.

The RT-AX82U is not even a consideration today.

But getting back to the issue you describe, what exactly is this 'flakiness'? What kind of use does the network get when all four of you are working? Is uploading a large part of it? If it is, then it's possible that your ISP speeds (mainly, uploads) are not capable of what you require for your work. Any information provided about this would be helpful to what is recommended.

The RT-AX86U has the resources it needs to handle your ISP speeds up to 1Gbps or more. All the other options do not.

Specifically what I'm considering is the need to have QoS on the router (and again, mainly for the uploads) so that the network functions smoothly for all.

The RT-AX58U can also have QoS enabled, but your download speeds would suffer, I'm sure.

More devices may be introduced in the next few days, but they won't be available immediately and they won't be a 'known' quantity either. Let others test the 'new' when you need something reliable, and now.
 
Thanks for the info! So off the bat, 56U and 82U are struck off. When I say flakiness, I mean there is signal dropout for devices. It is not a slowdown, just a disconnection then reconnection to the network. The signal is around-76dbm (lowest I have seen is -80) at the furthest from the router, with dropouts under load in this area of the house.
 
The 86U may address some of the dropout issues, but if it is interference from neighbors, you may want to hardwire an AP or another Asus box in AP mode to address the issue. Are the dropouts upstairs or just at the farthest points, through the most walls, etc ?

5Ghz drops off pretty quickly after one wall penetration. If the issue is multiple walls, then even the 86U may not help on 5GHz.
 
Dropouts are upstairs at the furthest point. I have made an illustration. Unfortunately, I have measured 2.4Ghz at between -66 and -70, so a small improvement but not much. My neighbourhood is also much more crowded on 2.4 channels, while there is only one other access point on 5Ghz. Running more cable is also not available as we do not own the property.
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is there any RG6 coax available for use that can get you upstairs and elsewhere in the house ? If so MOCA2 or 2.5 could be a reasonable option, even if shared with a DOCCIS 3.1 cable modem.
next alternative is the most recent powerline or possibly the mesh mentioned above with dedicated radios
 

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