Replacing Asus XT8 setup

[jimmyca]

Hi all,

I am looking for some advice on a setup to potentially replace my current pair of Asus XT8's in my house.

Since I hard wired the backhaul with Cat6 most of the issues I've had with the XT8 have gone but it's getting old with limited updates and it still struggles sometimes with furthest spots of the house especially upstairs. I was contemplating a new Wi-Fi 7 mesh setup but also considering whether with my setup, something less complicated like a Router/AP setup might work better.

My house is 2 floors, around 190m2 (newish build timber frame with plasterboard walls) with the router XT8 connected to my 1gb connection downstairs, with 2 devices (Hive and HP Dock) hard wired into ethernet ports. I have Cat6 cabling from it to the other XT8 upstairs. On the second XT8 in my son's room it has 2 devices (Xbox and Gaming PC) plugged into it. Device wise most that connect wirelessly in the house (around 30 in total) are 802.11ac with around 8x 802.11ax and 2x 802.11be and they tend to be split quite evenly across both devices.

I was looking at the BT10 as a like for like replacement but I'm questioning if it will be that much better with the devices I have and if it will actually address the signal issue in the low spots furthest away from both devices. Would a router/AP setup be cheaper and actually be better than the current XT8 setup?

Any advice on the approach for my setup would be good, as well as recommended hardware.

Many thanks

 

[2301]

Read this, some good points mentioned.

Wi-Fi 6 in 2025: Still the Best Standard to Have! | Dong Knows Tech

Wi-Fi 7 doesn't make Wi-Fi 6 obsolete. Quite contrary, it makes clear the fact the 6-year-old standard is still excellent today!

dongknows.com

 

[tgl]

If you don't have adequate coverage now, it's very unlikely that replacing the two XT8s with two other devices will fix it. Wifi range is largely limited by the laws of physics and the legal restrictions on transmit power. A plan that's much more likely to succeed is to get another AP, possibly moving one or both of the units you have to spread the coverage more evenly.

You could get another XT8, or maybe one BT10 to use with the XT8s if you want to have some 6GHz service (in a localized area) for those newer devices. It's hard to recommend the idea of buying three BT10s though: you're paying for three routers and three wifi APs when you only need one router and three APs. This is about the amount of gear where it starts to make financial sense to move out of consumer wifi and look at SMB gear that separates the router and AP functions.

Personally I replaced a multi-XT8 setup awhile ago. I'm currently using a pfSense router with some UniFi APs, and I'm pretty happy, but it's definitely a nerdy setup that's a bit complex to manage. If you want easy management you could do worse than go with an all-UniFi setup --- @Tech9 will be happy to sing the praises of that approach, I'm sure.

 

[jimmyca]

I only have the wired setup to one location where the upstairs XT8 is currently located so am restricted to adding anything else in other locations for wired backhaul. So initial focus was on what I could put in the same location that might help with coverage but take your point that any existing signal issues may be same for most devices located here.

On that I suppose I could look at getting another XT8 which would need to be wireless backhaul, but may mean a better reach and wireless performance.

 

[tgl]

On that I suppose I could look at getting another XT8 which would need to be wireless backhaul, but may mean a better reach and wireless performance.

Makes sense. We tend to look down our noses at wireless backhaul around here, because its performance is worse than wired backhaul, but it can certainly be better than nothing. A well-placed third XT8 might alleviate your coverage problems quite a bit. (Wireless backhaul between two XT8s can work across distances where regular client connections struggle, because the remote XT8 has a bigger antenna and probably more Tx power than most clients. Don't forget also that you can split the difference, ie place the remote XT8 about halfway between its backhaul AP and the furthest clients.)

 

[jimmyca]

Makes sense. We tend to look down our noses at wireless backhaul around here, because its performance is worse than wired backhaul, but it can certainly be better than nothing. A well-placed third XT8 might alleviate your coverage problems quite a bit. (Wireless backhaul between two XT8s can work across distances where regular client connections struggle, because the remote XT8 has a bigger antenna and probably more Tx power than most clients. Don't forget also that you can split the difference, ie place the remote XT8 about halfway between its backhaul AP and the furthest clients.)

The only thing putting me off slightly with a third XT8 is that recently I started moving some of the devices onto the 5GHz-2 channel (as not used for backhaul) to help reduce numbers on the 5GHz-1 range. This has seen some good improvements for those specific devices and I would worry that using 5GHz-2 as backhaul for the 3rd device would negate any improvements that 3rd one would bring. But having said that getting another XT8 would be much more cost effective than another complete system.

The other idea you mentioned about using a BT10 with the two XT8's got me thinking. As I'd only have one wired and one wireless backhaul the BT10 would struggle as would need to use the 5GHz for backhaul. But if I was to get something like the GT-AXE16000, I could use the 5gHz-2 as backhaul and benefit from the local 6GHz for some of the compatible devices, improved router performance from the improved processor etc specs and better wired backhaul (2.5gbps to 2.5gbps) on the one node. Something in-between would be the GT-AX11000 Pro but not sure it would be enough of a leap from the 3rd XT8 option perhaps, also pricing weirdly would be the same for the two when looking at used with warranty.

The 3rd XT8 is cheaper but the idea of the GT-AXE16000 is appealing if I am adding a 3rd device anyway and bringing some elements of further future proofing as well...