Replacing RT-N66U, need better cell phone support

[alternety]

My N66 is having problems and I am about to activate cell phones for the first time in my life. The phones need a WiFi connection for start-up. My N66 is not speaking with me. It appears to be running normally, but will not accept me when I try to log on. Firefox just says trouble connecting. But I can not turn on WiFi to get a phone activated.

Anyway, ignore that, it is not the primary issue. We are in a terrible service area for all of the cell carriers. One of the first things I am going to do is load some radio sensing software into a phone and roam around to see what signal strengths there are around here from what carriers.

We know from experience seeing other people trying to use phones near us (including standing on the roof and large earth moving equipment); generally unsuccessfully. I have specifically picked a phone and carrier that say they support smoothly transitioning between cell and WiFi. I will need to be able to cover the house and grounds to make this useful.

I have a large house, but pretty much every room has cat 5e. I need to get stable coverage within the house and for some distance outside. Outside coverage will most likely require some access points outside. The house has a lot of concrete and the windows do not pass RF very well.

OK - Routers. Starting with my office. I believe from my research, that I should get something focusing on range, and beam forming would be the best choice. Wireless bandwidth is not a particular goal, but can't hurt. I would prefer to stay with Asus for the routers because of the outstanding firmware from Merlin. I run an internal 1Gb LAN, and have a cable link that varies around 200Mb. This router would be the central connection for all of this stuff. It feeds an unmanaged switch for the LAN.

So my first question: what router for this primary position.

Second, I need suggestions for other units to distribute around to get reliable signals through the house. Trying to build a mesh network has possibilities, or I can just add some routers plugged into Ethernet. If a bunch of routers were to be chosen, they would need to be good at linking to cell phones. They could be used service other devices as well at some point.

I have looked at bunches of specs, but I am just not getting a decent feel for it. I am hoping some of you guys have some ideas for me.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Before depending on WiFi to provide cell service look at which carriers will give you or sell to you a Micro Cell device. Having used micro cells both from AT&T and T-Mobil they work well.

One of the problems with using WiFi cell connections is they can drop as you move around the house. I had this problem even with the ASUS T-Mobil router supposedly optimized to provide excellent cell service using WiFi. Another aggravation is if you forget to turn the WiFi calling off when you leave the house your phone will continue to try and make and receive calls using WiFi even if it is a crappy signal in a mall or hotspot and your phone automatically connects to the WiFi.

I only manually enable WiFi calling when I am in a building with zero bars of cell service, I won't be moving around and I need to make a call.

 

[alternety]

Thanks for the input Captain. I have never had cell phones, so I will be feeling my way. Until I get the sim card activated (which needs a WiFi access), I really can't move along. Once I have determined what cell carrier provides the bets service, I can look at other options.

But right now, I need a new router, I need it to do WiFi, and I would like to make it as useful as possible for my possible uses. And I can not get access to my existing router to setup WiFi.