Carnagerover
Senior Member
Hi all,
I am in the market for a router to provide QOS and good wireless range for my networking devices and users in my house. It has over 30 connected devices. I bought both the AC86U and the X4S, the AC86U has OpenWRT on there and the AC86U has Merlin with the FreshJR QOS script.
First thing that I noticed is that in my house the AC86U offers more range and throughput which is strange to me as everywhere states that the X4S should win out on both these categories. In my main dead zone room the X4S shows less bars in general and in my bedroom where I get 500Mbps on my iPad Pro I will get 780Mbps with the AC86U. Even on stock I noticed the range and throughput wasn't as good on the X4S.
QOS
Netgear X4S
I have Cake installed for the QOS with the Piece of cake script running, I have also enabled Per-Host Isolation.
This works well and will make sure that all devices get good bandwidth and latency, however say if someone on a PC is downloading and then also wants to watch a video stream due to the fairness they are throttled more so the video won't play.
Asus AC86U
Adaptive QOS fq_codel with FreshJR script.
After some tinkering this will allow me to watch multiple streams and also if that same user is downloading on the PC and then watches a stream due to the Adaptive QOS the video stream comes in higher than the download so it also works without buffering. However if something occurs on the network that FreshJR QOS doesn't set to the correct category then it will actually make the situation worse without further QOS tweaking.
I thought I would post this hear in case any Netgear users have any ideas why my range throughput isn't as good as expected? As far as which one I am going to keep I'm torn, I like all the other features that I get with the AC86U and the X4S does have a good set and forget QOS with Cake although it seems less flexible than the Asus AC86U it does for the most part work fine.
Anyone else got some pros and cons that I'm missing between the two, I really want to make sure than I am choosing the best option going forward. What would be the best way to test the wirelss on the two routers, Iperf?
I am in the market for a router to provide QOS and good wireless range for my networking devices and users in my house. It has over 30 connected devices. I bought both the AC86U and the X4S, the AC86U has OpenWRT on there and the AC86U has Merlin with the FreshJR QOS script.
First thing that I noticed is that in my house the AC86U offers more range and throughput which is strange to me as everywhere states that the X4S should win out on both these categories. In my main dead zone room the X4S shows less bars in general and in my bedroom where I get 500Mbps on my iPad Pro I will get 780Mbps with the AC86U. Even on stock I noticed the range and throughput wasn't as good on the X4S.
QOS
Netgear X4S
I have Cake installed for the QOS with the Piece of cake script running, I have also enabled Per-Host Isolation.
This works well and will make sure that all devices get good bandwidth and latency, however say if someone on a PC is downloading and then also wants to watch a video stream due to the fairness they are throttled more so the video won't play.
Asus AC86U
Adaptive QOS fq_codel with FreshJR script.
After some tinkering this will allow me to watch multiple streams and also if that same user is downloading on the PC and then watches a stream due to the Adaptive QOS the video stream comes in higher than the download so it also works without buffering. However if something occurs on the network that FreshJR QOS doesn't set to the correct category then it will actually make the situation worse without further QOS tweaking.
I thought I would post this hear in case any Netgear users have any ideas why my range throughput isn't as good as expected? As far as which one I am going to keep I'm torn, I like all the other features that I get with the AC86U and the X4S does have a good set and forget QOS with Cake although it seems less flexible than the Asus AC86U it does for the most part work fine.
Anyone else got some pros and cons that I'm missing between the two, I really want to make sure than I am choosing the best option going forward. What would be the best way to test the wirelss on the two routers, Iperf?