WAN aggregation

[houghton19]

Evening all, done a little reading about aggregation in asus routers but not 100% if it will do what I want, I have had a RT-5300 for about 6 years or so and still going strong 3 house moves later, despite 2 snapped Ariel’s .

In the not to distant future I’m looking to upgrade the router, would like to stick to asus as I have tried others and they just don’t seem to touch ASUS quality and standards.

going back to aggregation, would this allow me to bond two seperate VDSL services from two different providers? I currently get about 55meg and despite a FTTP splitter at the end of my street, no immediate plans to actually order it seem to be in place. Or is it just for two 1GBPS services?

Is aggregation also supported by Merlin or just ASUS firmware?

also if going around the £500 mark (give or take) which is the best asus router that does aggregation, WiFi 6 but I would also like the wireguard protocol for VPN, and again also merlin.

Thanks all

 

[Tech Junky]

Why VDSL? Don't yawl have 5G FWA over there?

Aggregation of WAN is going to be more problematic than a benefit. Aggregating the LAN side to get more out of the WAN is where the performance is. For instance by bonding 2 GE ports on my cable modem unlocked an additional 300mbps on a gig plan.

Anything Asus does Merlin will do since it's using the same code for the HW functionality. Merlin just adds more features to the GUI.

If you want WIFI 6/E get an AP and add it to your existing router for much less $ than buying a router.

 

[houghton19]

Why VDSL? Don't yawl have 5G FWA over there?

Aggregation of WAN is going to be more problematic than a benefit. Aggregating the LAN side to get more out of the WAN is where the performance is. For instance by bonding 2 GE ports on my cable modem unlocked an additional 300mbps on a gig plan.

Anything Asus does Merlin will do since it's using the same code for the HW functionality. Merlin just adds more features to the GUI.

If you want WIFI 6/E get an AP and add it to your existing router for much less $ than buying a router.

Thanks for the reply, I have been tempted by 5G but unfortunately there is no 5G where I am, I do get about 100-120 over 4G but most data plans are all “fair usage policy” and the fastest one in the area rates anything over 1000gb as business use and can terminate the contract.

edit: plus the extra £2/300 I would need to buy a decent LTE router to get them speeds.

 

[ColinTaylor]

going back to aggregation, would this allow me to bond two seperate VDSL services from two different providers?

No. To use two different providers you would need to use dual-WAN in load balancing mode. Asus' dual-WAN support doesn't have a good reputation.

 

[Tech Junky]

edit: plus the extra £2/300 I would need to buy a decent LTE router to get them speeds.

Here in the US the router/gateway comes with the subscription w/ T-Mobile or with MetroPCS you buy it for $150 for the same equipment.

There's got to be something better than VDSL though. I'm not familiar with what's available where you are but, xDSL in general is aging and not worth it. In my case I could get DSL 25mbps / $50/mo, Gigabit Cable for $80/mo, FWA 5G for $50/mo. DSL is a last ditch option for me but, tons of people in my building have it for some reason. It baffles me because they could do cable and get 400mbps for the same price.

FWA I'm getting usually 200/70 but, if I take the box outside and about 50ft from the building it jumps closer to 600/100 because the signal pattern is better at that distance., If I want to I take the box w/ me in the car and use it instead of the phone for internet w/ unlimited data. Keeps the mobile costs down.

 

[houghton19]

Yeah in the village I’m in we have two choices. ADSL or VDSL. The UK is way behind when it comes to internet. As I say I get mostly double via 4G but they either have data caps or ones that don’t are poor in this area. As I say I know there is a splitter at the end of my road but no fibre cabling pulled into our street. I would be straight on the 1GBPS package when available.