RT-AC3100 w/ 2 RT-AC86U aiMesh-my thoughts

[Island]

I just set up my mesh node network today after buying 2 86U's to go with my 3100 that I have had for almost 2 years. Setup went ok though, but pretty much took me all day, due to a few hiccups here and there.

Seems to be working fine, as far as I can tell. One of my 86U's I have in my loft and have an Ethernet cable I connect to my router with and Ethernet back haul seems to be working fine. My other 86U is downstairs in the living room, and most of my downstairs devices are connected to it.

My old setup was my 3100 as my main router in my master closet and I had my trusty 66U in my loft running in AP mode and a Linksys 1200AC with HG antennas downstairs. This setup worked great for the last 3 years. Only thing was I had 6 different SSID's for 2/5 ghz bands and really didn't like having all my SSID's floating around my neighborhood

Signal strength is pretty much all green and maxed. My home is a 2 story and about 4K square feet. Only thing I didn't like was spending 400$ on 2 new router's and not really seeing that huge of a difference over my old setup. The mesh network seems like a cool idea though, but seeing as how the client device still needs to be the one to initiate the connection, I am a little disappointed that my iPhone X, seems to connect to one of the 86U's but it will not switch when I go up or downstairs. The connection is always all green so maybe that's why. Overall, I am happy that the setup went well, and AImesh works.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Sounds like a high end setup. Perhaps only a single node/AP is needed for your home. My house is 2-story with slightly less square footage than yours, and one AC86U + one AC68U covers all corners with 5 GHz with several parts of my home having similar high signal strength from the AC86U and AC68U.

 

[Island]

Sounds like a high end setup. Perhaps only a single node/AP is needed for your home. My house is 2-story with slightly less square footage than yours, and one AC86U + one AC68U covers all corners with 5 GHz with several parts of my home having similar high signal strength from the AC86U and AC68U.

I really didn't NEED the 86u's as I purchased 2 68U's from Amazon during black Friday, but I have been OCD'ing thinking about buyers remorse with the new 86U's just coming out....and you know how it goes with people like us.... (I would assume most here with the love for new tech and NO will power!!)

Anyway...I also have a Salt water reef tank in my downstairs that runs an Apex controller for all the tank peripherals. It doesn't work off of wireless and needs an Ethernet port, hence why I decided to get a router for downstairs as well. All in all, I am more then satisfied with the mesh setup so far. I would assume it will only get better as the firmware matures down the road.

Heck, I even got Alexa to finally work with my router and it was pretty cool asking her to ask Asus router to turn on my guest network. She did of course use her name in the guest network and made a lame password (Wednesday) But, still pretty cool function and all is working as it should!

 

[maxbraketorque]

If you like to tinker, you may want to consider making one of the 86U's the primary router. That device is actually more powerful and has better range than the 3100.

 

[Island]

If you like to tinker, you may want to consider making one of the 86U's the primary router. That device is actually more powerful and has better range than the 3100.

Darn u Max. haha...I was thinking about the same thing...I just didn't want to have to reconfig the new router and all my peripherals again. I guess I could save the 3100 config and then install it to the 86U. Do u really think I would notice that much of a benefit? I did read your thread on your testing of the 86U.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Darn u Max. haha...I was thinking about the same thing...I just didn't want to have to reconfig the new router and all my peripherals again. I guess I could save the 3100 config and then install it to the 86U. Do u really think I would notice that much of a benefit? I did read your thread on your testing of the 86U.

I guess it depends on how much processing power is needed to run the AiMesh. I would assume that the primary router has the majority of the job. So maybe using the 86U as the main might improve network responsiveness. Hard to say whether it would really be noticeable though. However, if you use the router as a VPN server or client, it will definitely be beneficial to use the 86U as the main.

 

[Island]

I guess it depends on how much processing power is needed to run the AiMesh. I would assume that the primary router has the majority of the job. So maybe using the 86U as the main might improve network responsiveness. Hard to say whether it would really be noticeable though. However, if you use the router as a VPN server or client, it will definitely be beneficial to use the 86U as the main.

Well, i'm off today, the wife's at work and kids in school....Gonna try it out and see if a newer router with 400 more MHz and more flash memory will benefit my setup? I don't use a VPN, QOS or any other of these adept features, but I do have fiber to the house hub gateway, and I pay for Gigabit Ethernet, so I guess any little bit will help. Just hope I don't FUBAR my network doing this as I just got everything up and running perfect yesterday......Till we meet again...Wish me luck!

 

[Island]

So, FYI to anyone who has the same equipment or similar to what I am running...... It was kind of a pain in the butt to reconfigure my whole network again, but swapping out my old 3100 for one of my new 86U's was well worth it. The faster internals really do help out.

For one, my IPhone X gained almost 150 Mbps on running speed test! Pretty cool! Might be a placebo effect, but it also seems that my network is overall snappier in response to loading browsers and opening files on my network. I will check transfer speeds in a bit, but overall it was a good idea to swap out the 3100 for the 86U as the new main router! Thanks to Max above for pushing me into doing it!

 

[maxbraketorque]

You got that done pretty quickly. Glad it seems to be working better than with the AC3100 as the main.

 

[Island]

You got that done pretty quickly. Glad it seems to be working better than with the AC3100 as the main.

Thanks Max-Yeah, it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Took only a few hours. My wireless speeds have definitely improved. My office laptop which is a Asus ROG never was able to hit 500Mbps on the 5Ghz band. With my 86U as my main router, I no longer have to say this as it was finally achieved! I pay for gigabit Ethernet and I usually can hit over 900Mbps on speed tests via my wired connection, but never get over 500 via wireless. I'm a happy man!

 

[Island]

Wireless AC Test-86U Mesh router WOOT!

 

[Island]

Wired Gigabit speed test-86U mesh router

 

[maxbraketorque]

Impressive. Gotta love the latency times for either router.

 

[Island]

Just wanted to update my thread and state that my mesh network has been running flawlessly! Adding the 2 86U's was worth it for me, and swapping out my old 3100 as my main router for one of the 86U's was a good idea and the faster and newer hardware definitely helps and is noticeable.

I don't really notice to much of a difference surfing the net as latency is latency, but downloads and speed tests are very noticeable with the upgrade. Case in point, I just swapped my office ROG laptop over from wireless to wired, and I ran a speed test. Don't think I have ever hit over a gig in speed tests on any of my other computers. Loving the new 86U's and mesh network!