Patrick9876
Regular Contributor
I've been using an ASUS RT-AC86U with Merlin firmware for a few years and have been completely satisfied with its reliability, performance, and wireless coverage. However, I was just told that the router's lack of 802.11ax may be the source of a Dell laptop's WiFi problem. I'm not sure I buy this reasoning (which I'll describe at the end of this posting) but it's got me thinking about a router upgrade. My only requirements are
RT-AX86U is probably overkill (and expensive) for my needs.
RT-AX86S might be a reasonable choice
RT-AX82U (if the rgb junk can be turned off)
Any comments on these routers? Any other suggestions that would meet my (pretty limited) needs?
Background - the reason I might need to upgrade.
My wife got a Dell laptop last year. It worked fine until I did a BIOS upgrade. Then the wireless adapter would disable during image backups across the WiFi connection. After a lot of debugging I discovered that the wifi adapter would go disabled during transmission of a long string of large blocks of data. Transmission of a single 25GB file would kill it every time. (It varied, but sometimes it would transmit for many minutes - 10-15 minutes - before failing. Going back to the original BIOS level fixed the problem.
Yesterday I saw that somebody with this same problem fixed it by upgrading his router to one with AX support. I think that implies that the wifi adapter is trying to use 801.11AX capabilities even though the router supports only 801.11ac. Does that sound like a possible explanation? In any case I don't like buying a new router on the possibility it might circumvent a Dell problem, but I don't like keeping the laptop on significantly back-level BIOS either.
- Wireless performance at least as good as the RT-AC86U for connections up to about 30 feet (through a couple plasterboard walls and/or one wooden floor)
- 1 Gb Ethernet (no need for 2.5 Ethernet)
- Support for OpenVPN server
- DDNS support (preferably FreeDNS.Afraid.org, but I could switch)
- Ability to add CNAME records to the router's DNS server. (Dnsmasq or something similar.)
- Preferably not having to use OpenWrt, DD-WRT, or Tomato. (Does Tomato still exist?) In other words, staying with Merlin would be nice.
RT-AX86U is probably overkill (and expensive) for my needs.
RT-AX86S might be a reasonable choice
RT-AX82U (if the rgb junk can be turned off)
Any comments on these routers? Any other suggestions that would meet my (pretty limited) needs?
Background - the reason I might need to upgrade.
My wife got a Dell laptop last year. It worked fine until I did a BIOS upgrade. Then the wireless adapter would disable during image backups across the WiFi connection. After a lot of debugging I discovered that the wifi adapter would go disabled during transmission of a long string of large blocks of data. Transmission of a single 25GB file would kill it every time. (It varied, but sometimes it would transmit for many minutes - 10-15 minutes - before failing. Going back to the original BIOS level fixed the problem.
Yesterday I saw that somebody with this same problem fixed it by upgrading his router to one with AX support. I think that implies that the wifi adapter is trying to use 801.11AX capabilities even though the router supports only 801.11ac. Does that sound like a possible explanation? In any case I don't like buying a new router on the possibility it might circumvent a Dell problem, but I don't like keeping the laptop on significantly back-level BIOS either.