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Trying to keep my wifi speed high

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I don't think I'll be getting the fiber option anytime soon. I'm on the 50Mbps plan with dual lines sync'd at 30 and 29. According to the tech I am also maximum distance from the box for the 50Mbps profile. Only other option is comcast but the upload speeds are horrible.


Anyways back to the OP.. How big is your house and what is the layout?

I've helped friends setup similarly in 2500sq ft+ 2 story houses and the wifi is pretty acceptable using combinations of 2 normal $100-$150 range AC routers. One as router and the secondary as a wired AP.

2400 sqft home. my main router (asus ac5300) is in the living room in the center of the house. however, the connection is weaker and slower when I am in any of the bedrooms. especially the bathrooms (because they are in all of the bedrooms).

I was thinking since i had 3 routers, why the heck not used them in 3 sections of the house. which is what it did.
When they each have their own SSID. speeds were amazing! but this meant that i had to manually select and change my SSID every time I was in that section of the house.

but then I thought, anyway to seamlessly combine the wifi's all together so I do not have to manually change my network names each time I am in a section of the home?

I thought about giving them all the same name... it basically did not work. I had to manually turn off and on my wifi each and everytime to connect to the strongest signal, bigger pain of other devices where i could not do that so easily.

so then i learned about AP's. easiest AP to do? Asus AiMesh. Loved how it worked but it became an issue when i started to have guest over. realized that the Asus routers would lose one of the 5ghz bands to enable wireless AP. this meant a decrease in speed. why pay for high speed when you cant use it?
so more researching lead me to going the normal old school ethernet AP route. which created another issue of the ATT gateway not releasing weak connections so the AP can pick it up.

As of right now, I basically almost given up. I turned off wifi on the ATT gateway and only using 1 router, the Asus AC5300... just gonna deal with the slower speeds until i find a better solution.
 
From your pdf file: "Gigabit wifi range but not at gigabit speed"
Close to Gigabit WiFi only with 4x4 AC client and 10ft around the router with no obstacles.
Real life expectations explained here - https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

you right. Thanks for the info.
but Yes, in my own head, when i said gigabit speed, i was expecting exactly what was explained in the link.
to be specific, exactly that picture under bullet point #3.
 
OH I had another idea... will this work?

both Asus routers are hardwired APs to the ATT Gateway.

disable the ATT gateway wifi and only use the wifi from the 2 Asus routers. set both router SSID's to be the same.

will this work? I at least get good coverage in 2 of 3 sections of the house while (hopefully) maintaining the seamless/roaming aspect of wifi and keeping my speed?
 
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Yes, in my own head, when i said gigabit speed, i was expecting exactly what was explained in the link

You know now you can't really get Gigabit speed over WiFi. You can get 200-400Mbps though. How many of your devices need more?

Asus routers would lose one of the 5ghz bands to enable wireless AP. this meant a decrease in speed.

Not decrease in speed. The speed to client is the same. Decrease in total throughput if your clients are spread between both 5GHz bands.
 
OH I had another idea... will this work?

both Asus routers are hardwired APs to the ATT Gateway.

disable the ATT gateway wifi and only use the wifi from the 2 Asus routers. set both router SSID's to be the same.

will this work? I at least get good coverage in 2 of 3 sections of the house while (hopefully) maintaining the seamless/roaming aspect of wifi and keeping my speed?

That should work however if you have any router or ip issues you would need to get into the BGW210 for configuration and changes. I felt the interface was confusing and inadequate.

Not sure how this would be different from using 1 asus as an actual wifi router and 1 asus as an AP. My opinion is to eliminate the BGW210 from any routing or wifi duties completely.
 
Use this information to put your ISP modem in close to bridge mode config:
https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-internet-equipment/strict-nat-bridge-mode-what-is-ip-passthrough-can-i-enable-on-my-arris-bgw210-or-like-router/5defbfffbad5f2f606ad5ed2?source=ESSZ0SSPR00facsEM&wtExtndSource=20191122160807_AT&T Internet Features_Wireline_LITHIUM_2855910569
You don't have many options:
a) RT-AC5300 as router, RT-AC68U as node, wired backhaul AiMesh.
b) RT-AC5300 as router, RT-AC68U in AP mode, one SSID for 2.4GHz, one SSID for 5GHz.
Find which one works better for you.
 
You know now you can't really get Gigabit speed over WiFi. You can get 200-400Mbps though. How many of your devices need more?



Not decrease in speed. The speed to client is the same. Decrease in total throughput if your clients are spread between both 5GHz bands.


this was in regards to the AiMesh router and node? whatever it is, it was definitely a lower result based on a speedtest.

Use this information to put your ISP modem in close to bridge mode config:
https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-internet-equipment/strict-nat-bridge-mode-what-is-ip-passthrough-can-i-enable-on-my-arris-bgw210-or-like-router/5defbfffbad5f2f606ad5ed2?source=ESSZ0SSPR00facsEM&wtExtndSource=20191122160807_AT&T Internet Features_Wireline_LITHIUM_2855910569
You don't have many options:
a) RT-AC5300 as router, RT-AC68U as node, wired backhaul AiMesh.
b) RT-AC5300 as router, RT-AC68U in AP mode, one SSID for 2.4GHz, one SSID for 5GHz.
Find which one works better for you.

I will look into this. thank you

That should work however if you have any router or ip issues you would need to get into the BGW210 for configuration and changes. I felt the interface was confusing and inadequate.

Not sure how this would be different from using 1 asus as an actual wifi router and 1 asus as an AP. My opinion is to eliminate the BGW210 from any routing or wifi duties completely.

I cannot use 1 Asus router as the main and the 2nd Asus router as an AP because how the home's wires are physically set up.
the external fiber line coming into the house is in the master bedroom closet. the master bedroom closet is on 1 side of the house. not the ideal spot for a router because the rest of the house would get weak or no signal. good thing is the closet is also a hub for all the ethernet cables extend to teh rest of the house. so what i did was connect one of those ethernet cables into the lan port on the ATT gateway which goes to teh living room (center of the house). in the living room, i plugged an ethernet cable from teh wall into the WAN port of my Asus AC5300.

if i were to hardwire any node to the Asus AC5300... i would have to move the AC5300 into the closet (which creates the same issue as above) or if i did wireless aimesh node a slower connection. how slow? at its best i would be 100mpbs but usually it is around the 50mbps range.
 
I cannot use 1 Asus router as the main and the 2nd Asus router as an AP because how the home's wires are physically set up.
the external fiber line coming into the house is in the master bedroom closet. the master bedroom closet is on 1 side of the house. not the ideal spot for a router because the rest of the house would get weak or no signal. good thing is the closet is also a hub for all the ethernet cables extend to teh rest of the house. so what i did was connect one of those ethernet cables into the lan port on the ATT gateway which goes to teh living room (center of the house). in the living room, i plugged an ethernet cable from teh wall into the WAN port of my Asus AC5300.

if i were to hardwire any node to the Asus AC5300... i would have to move the AC5300 into the closet (which creates the same issue as above) or if i did wireless aimesh node a slower connection. how slow? at its best i would be 100mpbs but usually it is around the 50mbps range.

Got it. I have the same setup. Service is in my bedroom closet. So I put my 86U there. Which is also ethernet distribution for the house. I guess I'm lucky my closet is a decent place for distributing wifi as well.
 
@Jeff Tran - Referencing your PDF, presuming you intend on keeping all this Asus gear, I'd go with the secondary, all hard-wired setup if possible. Last I researched, the AiMesh code base wasn't very well optimized (or bug-fixed) for a pure-mesh topology and behavior was flaky (that may have changed, and I would welcome the update/correction if that's the case). Additionally, it goes without saying that all Asus stuff should be running the latest Merlin version that's proven the most stable for your needs.

I'd also highly recommend priming yourself with this Duckware article to gain some insight on realistic throughput expectations, if you're not fully aware already.
 
@Jeff Tran - Referencing your PDF, presuming you intend on keeping all this Asus gear, I'd go with the secondary, all hard-wired setup if possible. Last I researched, the AiMesh code base wasn't very well optimized (or bug-fixed) for a pure-mesh topology and behavior was flaky (that may have changed, and I would welcome the update/correction if that's the case). Additionally, it goes without saying that all Asus stuff should be running the latest Merlin version that's proven the most stable for your needs.

I'd also highly recommend priming yourself with this Duckware article to gain some insight on realistic throughput expectations, if you're not fully aware already.

thanks
Still new to this networking thing so still looking at stuff.
Merlin vs Asus update? are they different?
and yes that duckware article, i was reading that yesterday.
 

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