Upgrading RT-N66U to AC and adding Video Streaming / USB 3.0

[maddbomber83]

Hello; thank you in advance for reading this / providing guidance. I was detailed as I'm also using this to lay out my thoughts on an upgrade.

I am asking the random people from the forum for a sanity check / insight into our basic home's first network upgrade (beyond swapping components in place) since 2009; and hopefully be the final configuration.

The bottom portions are just details, the top 3 sections are TL&DR.

Reasons for Upgrade:

• I would like to move my router from the back, to the middle of my house so that all areas get ~3-4 bars N.
• To support this, I would like our primary computers at the back of the house to connect via AC WiFi to the router for ~1gb connection to each other (we commonly access large files from the other computer).
• I need these back computers to maintain acceptable gaming latency / stability.
• I currently have a 3.0 USB portable WiFi drive (with poor N connection capability, we use it on road trips for 480/720p) plugged into one of the gaming computers in the back.
• I would like this added to the network directly for 1080p streaming throughout the house.
• I would also like to move our backups (from the computer drives) to a networked location.
• We do have a 4k TV that eventually will likely stream 4k content through (an AC adapter likely)

Hardware Considerations:

• New Motherboards have AC (1300) capabilities.
• Asus has AC (1300) adapters as well (Dual Band AC1900 as an example).
• The RT-AC68 or even RT-AC66 look to cover the backbone.
• The RT-AC87 looks sexy and is an acceptable $60 premium on the 68.
• Coupling the 87 in the center of the house with the 66 or 68 in the back room and moving the RT-N66 to the Master Bedroom looks like a solid option..
• The Nexus phones (our only AC devices right now) are single antenna and would likely reach our 50mbit internet speed on either N or AC assuming coverage goes from 0-1 bars to 3-4 ish (at 5 bars it hits just shy of 50mbit internet download speeds, at 0-1 it is 8mbit).
• While I prefer to connect the mobile WiFi drive to the USB 3.0 port of the router (DLNA and maybe PLEX) I have also considered moving up to a NAS such as the QNAP TS-251 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS, Intel 2.41GHz Dual Core CPU with Media Transcoding (TS-251-US)
• Either way I am hoping to move to roaming profiles with Windows 10 (4 home users on 2 computers currently, each computer backs up to the other). I would like to move this to the network to support a few laptops we have as well (currently set up as single or dual user).
• I have a strong (but not binding) preference to ASUS and MERLIN.

Upgrade routes

• ($200) - Simply add the AC68 to the center of house and plug in 3.0 drive.
  - Keep the rest of the setup the same.
  - With the backroom at 450mbs N to the AC Router performance on network / streaming should be enough.
  - The back computers would also be on a 1gb wired connection locally.
  - Front room would eventually be limited to the 60-80mbit connection of the powerline adapters though (should be able to swap a few of the devices from wired to N though for 150ish).
• ($370) - Add AC68 to center w/ USB Drive; AC66 to Back; move N66 to front
  - This would keep the main computers / backups at 1gb to network / compatible devices.
• (+$60) - Use the AC87 as center device instead of the AC68.
  - Mostly for the reasonable upgrade price and possibly better performance.
• (+$300-$400) - Use a NAS instead of needing a USB 3.0 Router.
  - Costly, but may be a better long term backup option.
  - Also may be a better streaming / roaming profile solution (along with another VM to play with).
  - Cost justification, may need to wait until storage needs expansion. The AC Routers can likely handle a 4 member household's needs.

Reasons for Current Setup:

• Lowest Latency to Gaming Computers at back of house
• With router at back of the house, single or no bar N signal at farthest point in Master Bedroom. (Nexus Phones get ~8mbit down)
• Everything in between has 3-5 bars.
• Wired Line only possible from back room to garage due to spousal limitations.

Current Setup:

• 50/3 mbit Internet
• ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router
• ZyXEL 600 Mbps Mini Powerline AV2 Gigabit Adapter, Starter Kit - 2 Units (PLA5205KIT)
• Patriot Aero 1TB Wireless Mobile Drive (PCGTW1000S)
• TP-LINK TL-SG1008D 10/100/1000Mbps 8-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch, 10Gbps Switching Capacity

House Layout:

• Router Located at back of house (80ft) in the computer room / near extra bedrooms.
• Master Bed located at front through house 5 interior walls.
• Powerline Adapater from Ethernet Cable connecting Back Room (Router) to Garage (front of house); over power line to Master Bedroom (same phase) to local wired gigabit switch.
• Living Room with various WiFi devices in middle (Game Consoles / TV / Players)

Router Wired Connections:

• Two Desktop Computers
• Home Automation Controller
• Cable to Garage Power Line Connection
• Spare

Wired Switch (through Power line) Connections:

• Sonos Sound System
• TV Ethernet (it has dual band N as well)
• Home Phone System
• Blu-Ray Player

Wireless Clients (G/N):

• Printers
• Amazon Devices (a few Kindle Fires, Fire TV)
• A few Chrome casts
• 2 Nexus 5 phones (AC Capable)
• A few re purposed old Samsung phones
• Tivo
• iPods and iPhones
• Vizio TV and Panasonic Blu-Ray Players
• Consoles (xBox, Wii)
• WiFi Drives
• Laptops (N Capable)

 

[jegesq]

I'm not surprised that after 12 days, you haven't gotten a response yet. Man, that's a lot of very well-thought out stuff, and it's pretty hard for anyone to respond to all of that.

But to boil your situation down, I'd probably go with either of these choices if I were you:

($370) - Add AC68 to center w/ USB Drive; AC66 to Back; move N66 to front
or,
(+$60) - Use the AC87 as center device instead of the AC68.

Either way, you should have really excellent coverage. Not quite sure why you're using the powerline stuff, but if it works for you, and keeps your phones somewhat isolated (and I'm assuming these are VOIP phones), then so be it.

Are you going to connect to your "back room" wired or wirelessly (i.e., use the AC66 as an AP or a repeater?). In other posts, I've described my own set up, which probably has as much stuff connected as in your's, but I'm just using two AC66's, one as a router the other as repeater, and it works great. And as I've said elsewhere, if I were setting things up today, I might just use two 68's or maybe even two 87's (but it would probably be overkill to use an 87 as an AP/repeater).

Personally, I wouldn't go with the NAS option, at least not as a substitute for using good consumer feature-packed wireless routers that can do so much. If you really want a NAS, just use some old computer you have laying around (or buy a cheap board and some large drives) and try out FreeNAS; it works great for storage and streaming. As for whether you absolutely must have USB 3.0 (which means either the 68 or 87), I find that even with USB 2.0 on my AC66, I can still stream HD video with no problems across the network. I know others have reported problems, but I've never had any (and I am using Merlin FW...374.38 on the router and .41 on the repeater; yes, not the latest, but I find they work best for me).

Oh, and as for cost, you'll also have to remember that not everything you are currently using will be able to connect at AC speeds, so you'll also have to factor in the cost of upgrading NIC's or adding USB dongles. And some stuff, the consumer streaming and gaming stuff is just what it is, and you probably can't upgrade the NIC's on those.

 

[maddbomber83]

Thank you for the reply.

The power line is actually network based due to poor coverage in the front.

I went ahead and picked up one 68 on sale and set that up in the center.

The 66n is set up as a repeater in the front and has a solid 450 mbit connection to the 68. Anything not AC is wired up to it (tv, console and such). Being an N connection I am quite happy with it.

The computers in the back have AC motherboards now and a stable 866 mbit connection to the 68.

I have one more hub if you will to set up, but this will wait for the dust to settle on the 3200.



My only issue is that the 68 did not pick up on my USB 3.0 drive. But since I just upgraded motherboards I am likely to hard wire in a home storage server of some kind to function as the NAS.

Both computers in

 

[azazel1024]

If you are looking at transfering files between computers, keep in mind, your best bet is to use a switch and wire them together instead of going through wireless. With wireless if you try to transfer a file from one computer to another, you are going to have a double penalty as you have two wireless devices chatting at once. That plus any real distance and your ~70-80MB/sec speeds if you were close to the router (plus distance to it, since you aren't in the same room) are likely to look more like 20-30MB/sec.

Wired, >>>100MB/sec.

Though if you are using the USB3 storage on the router and just hitting the router's local storage for transfering files, there at least isn't the relay penalty, though it is still going to be significantly slower than hard wired and NAS, or even if the router could be in the same room as the computers accessing the files.