N55U holding up well... But thinking of upgrading to 68U or 86U

[FadgewackeR]

Morning folks.

Not been a member of the forum long, but so far found lots of useful information here, so thanks for all the collective intelligence being spread about.

I'm a networking novice, yet tech savvy, with very basic linux capabilities.

I live in a fairly rural location, but in a new build house that has been missed out of the fibre roll out plans and given a direct exchange line (coppper) that's only capable of 15mb ADSL which wasn't realy suiting my streaming needs and being in bed with a large, faceless ISP, I had little control over the line to tweak to my needs when it got out of kilter.

I recently became aware of a local company who are doing wireless / radio broadband up to 60 d/60 u and was able to wriggle out of my contract with my current ISP, so bit the bullet and went for it. Great service from them by the way - BeeLine Broadband

So my current WAN --> 30dn 15up (60/60 is still expensive, but my line is capable) Connection, when throttled marginally is A rated across the board over at DSLReports.

Router is a DSL-N55U (wan into one of the 4 ethernet ports by setting it up as a dual WAN failover) which I've had for 4 and a half years.

Wired - PS4Pro, QNAP TS-453A-4, Devolo 9131 dLAN AV 500 Powerline Adapter

Powerline Ring - Vodafone VOIP signal booster, PS4, Panasonic GT30 Plasma, Laptop Workstation, Network Printer

Wireless - 2 x iPhone, 1 x iPad, LG65B7 OLED (would be wired but I lost my 4th ethernet for WAN in), Yamaha YSP 2700 Sound Projector, 2 x Yamaha Wx-030 Network Audio / Radio, PS3, Main Laptop and use of Ps4 remote play.

Wireless range has always been pretty good, no black spots inside. Gets a bit flaky on the patio, but I can live with that. A bit more range would be nice.

I use QoS to throttle the connection marginally to reduce bufferbloat and to protect the connection when gaming, but aside from that I don't do much complex.
My main activities, in this order of importance are: Gaming, Netflix / Prime and fairly heavy downloading (but never at a time when the connection is required by anything else)

VPN wise I have a PIA account and I'd have everything (bar the games consoles) going through VPN at the router stage if it gave acceptable performance. It's not essential that is the case (which is a good job as the N55U won't do it), but the main thing I need thru VPN is my NAS, and that handles its VPN connection in isolation very well.

In truth, the router has been rock solid for pretty much the entire time I've had it, but it's getting a bit hot nowadays and there's been a few instances where it's needed a reboot more recently, so:

Is it really worth me upgrading to a 68 or an 86 based on what I've got to handle, or do I wait until it dies? I'm very happy with the Asus UI, and if AiMesh worked on this router I'd have already upgraded and used this as an AP near the garden.
Budget wise, I'd be happy to buy either, but would really welcome the opinions of those more learned than I.

Cheers.

 

[Easy Rhino]

The N55U is an N600 router, right?

What model is your main laptop? I wonder what kind of peak speeds you might get.

Do you need dual WAN failover ability? It sounds like you have only one ISP.

Your internet speed isn't that fast, as things go. So your wifi isn't throttling anything you can do on the Internet. However, where you might benefit is any traffic within your LAN, if you have that (especially with the NAS?)

Newer processors can help with QoS performance or VPN encryption at the router level. It sounds like your current router handles Q0S at your current speeds fine, so the main extra benefit would be the option of running everything through VPN.

 

[FadgewackeR]

Thanks for the reply @Easy Rhino

The N55U is indeed an N600 router.

My main laptop is a bit of an oldie, but I've kept it going with little upgrades and it'll do what I need it to in the living room for now. It's an Elitebook 8740w, so is only capable of dealing with 802.11a/b/g/n on the wifi side. It doesn't get taxed too hard to be honest.

Regards WAN failover, that's not required. I only referenced it above as I needed to use the router's capability to act as a failover so it would accept my Radio Broadband signal into an Ethernet port alongside the ADSL. Once I disconnected my ADSL, it stayed in a permanently "failed-over" state. A "Fibre" router won't need me to burn an ethernet out for that purpose.

LAN traffic would typically be defined as NAS streaming to another TV (via powerline), while Netflix to the upstairs TV and PS4 Pro downstairs. Major Copy/ Write ops on the NAS are realtively infrequent, and any scheduled downloading / maintenance takes place in the wee small hours.

Looks like I'll stick with it for a while longer and wait for the 86U to come down in price, as there is bound to be some loss thru VPN at the router and I've hardly got bandwidth to burn!

Aside from that, I'm missing out on having my main TV hard wired to the router while not taking advantage of the latest wireless protocols, but I suppose I could just put a little switch in to share the connection with the powerline to the rest of the house (wouldn't want to touch the NAS / PS4 Pro connections).

Cheers.

 

[FadgewackeR]

Because I become obsessed with stuff, I've bought an 86U... Here tomorrow.

I'll get it set and if there's no appreciable difference, I'll send it back!

I saw something about Airplay not working so well with the 86U (after I bought it) so I hope that's a non-issue... Other than that, I'm sure it'll be no worse than my 4 1/2 year old DSL-N55U!