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Purchasing Mesh WifI

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Weggy

Regular Contributor
Hey,

I currently have a RT-AC5300 using Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 (30-Jan-2021). I'd like to improve the Wi-Fi in my 4 bed (two floor) house. I was interested in expanding using a wifi mesh system. But I'm uncertain which product to buy. The Google Nest Wifi looks really good but I'm worried it won't function as well with my router as the Asus ZenWiFi AX system might. Does it matter which system I purchase given my router? Are there other things I should consider. Advice welcome :)

Many Thanks
 
I love my 3 eero pro units I got off of eBay. Yes, they are wifi 5 only but they are tri-band and serve my needs as I have no wifi 6 devices. Easy setup and they just work. It does take a few days for them to “settle in” and adjust the mesh system but they provide me seamless wifi mesh performance and they cost less than $200 delivered. The new eero pro 6 offers tri-band like my eero pro units but also have wifi 6 but they cost $599. For me the only downside is lack of a vpn client. I get around that by using my old RT-AC86U behind the eero system to provide vpn service to my Apple TV via a dedicated IP from Torguard server in Dallas just so my wife can watch her Astros home games since we moved from Texas. Also, the older eero pro units still have bandwidth management the new eero 6 do not yet have. It works great on a 500m or less connection. I have never been able to get a triple A+ result from http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest until I got the eero pros. Yes, I am a fanboy of my eero pro setup. Oh, I almost forgot to mention.... seamless Guest wifi across ALL nodes! :)
 

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Adding a mesh Wi-Fi system to an existing router can be tricky. You'll need to put the mesh in AP mode and coordinate the router's channels with the mesh so they don't interfere.
 
Mesh is overrated unless you've got a huge mulit-router setup where centralized management would be helpful.
 

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