Which Router to upgrade to from RT-AC66U

[chrismccoy]

im currently using the AC66U and the range is horrible, have a 6000 sq foot home, and looking for something better, for a lot of devices as well.

been either looking at 3200 or 3100.

any input would be great.

 

[dlandiss]

I predict a real challenge trying to cover a house that size with one radio. Consider a main router performing DHCP etc, wired to a couple of access points at remote parts of the house.

It is easy to get good bandwidth 50-60' away in free space, but when the radio signal has to pass through walls and floors, encountering plumbing and wiring on the way, access points are the answer.

If you want to compare the range of various routers, Tim Higgins has performed hundreds of objective tests and documented them well on pages like this one.

 

[Puppa]

Latest routers from ASUS (88, 3100, 5300) claim to cover more square feet than their predecessors--up to 5000 sq ft. That *may* still cover your entire home, assuming it's 2-story and you put the router on the 2nd floor. A 6000 sq ft sprawling ranch, however, is going to require an additional access point. That those routers are brand-spanking new may mean you hit some bugs early on. Going the conservative approach, using the 66 as your access point with the now-discounted 3200 may work well for you.

Also in play is how much neighbouring interference you have, which is likely on 2.4GHz. If the interference is bad enough on 2.4GHz to require that you use 5GHz frequencies, you're probably going to need an access point regardless. Check out the Android app Wifi Analyzer to see what your situation is on 2.4 and 5GHz. It might be helpful in this regard to see if the AC66's range problem is due to primarily to interference, distance, or both.

Please post back what you see in Wifi Analyzer or the Apple equivalent (mentioned elsewhere in these forums, I believe).
You should focus on normal use and problem areas, such as far corners, behind large mirrored walls, etc.

 

[chrismccoy]

i do currently have a powerline from where the router is and the an additional powerline downstairs. but the strengh isnt that great when lots of devices are used

 

[RMerlin]

Location, location, location. 5000 sqf is probably assuming the router is in the exact dead center. Putting a router at the extreme end of a 5000 sqf house will definitely not work for the 5 GHz band.

 

[L&LD]

I would be looking at the AC3100 or the AC88U (or higher).

Anything older is not worth considering, imo. But if you can be in test mode for a week or so, I would also have the AC3200 on hand as a 'sanity check' on the newest hardware too.

Of course, you will probably need to re-use your AC66U as an AP for the best results either way.

 

[alarsen77]

I just upgraded from my RT-N66U, first I got the RT-AC87R from best buy but encountered the numerous 5GHz issues many users faced, so I then got the RT-AC3100 and so far I am extremely pleased with it. We have a much smaller house though about 1700 sqf. I have no range issues anywhere and even up in the bedroom about 40 ft from the router with plaster walls I still get full signal on the 5GHz band and 190-220 mbps over wifi on a speed test.

 

[cpu]

How many floors ? I have two floors in about 3000 sq feet and I found that having a single router wouldn't hack it. I ended up with a RT-AC3200 as the gateway on the lower level and a RT-AC68 on the upper level and I get pretty good coverage. I've played with a RT-AC66 I have as well and found it to be no help at all, I live in 5Ghz for the speed and the RT-AC66 is a major bottle neck, better off with a poor signal to one of the other two routers.

 

[connorm]

Cpu how did you have your rt-ac68 setup to the rt-ac3200? Bridge 5GHz to one 5GHz radio? Then use only 2.4 on the 68 or just deal with half the troughput on 5GHz?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dlandiss]

Location, location, location. 5000 sqf is probably assuming the router is in the exact dead center. Putting a router at the extreme end of a 5000 sqf house will definitely not work for the 5 GHz band.

Indeed, 5000 sq ft is a circle of 40' radius. Easy to do in free space -- through an open window I easily get >60' from my NT-66U. It is the inside walls and utilities that kill it.

 

[chrismccoy]

2 floors + basement, the router is on the 2nd floor.

 

[cpu]

Cpu how did you have your rt-ac68 setup to the rt-ac3200? Bridge 5GHz to one 5GHz radio? Then use only 2.4 on the 68 or just deal with half the troughput on 5GHz?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Currently I have the 2.4ghz turned off on the rt-ac3200 and both 5ghz radios setup with smart connect, although this didn't seem to change anything there as everything seems to pick 5g-2 on channel 161. The rt-ac68 is setup to handle all 2.4ghz and acts as a backup on 5ghz if I need it. All of my 2.4ghz is on the 2nd floor. I have played with forcing some of the 5ghz via the ac68 and it works but generally if I get a reasonable connection to the ac3200 it tends to handle it better. I've got USB3 disks on both routers and the ac3200 connections over 5ghz tend to run about 28MB while the 5ghz connections to directly to the AC68 run about 20MB, the AC66 tops out around 8MB to either of the other two routers disks, it runs out of CPU. The AC3200 is the internet gateway, the other two are plugged in directly to the AC3200 via 1gb ethernet. Most connections go through at least two walls. I have not made any changes in setting to anything that can't be modified by the GUI.
I haven't had much luck with using the AC68 as a bridge, I tried to use it to my Samsung TV(100mb ethernet interface) to get Amazon prime going and I could not keep the connection up for a whole movie, but that was quite a while back. This setup is working fairly well for me if I could just keep the gateway working, it had been dying every 3.5 days until 56_2, httpd just died at 7.5 days but the router seems to still be working. Actually it doesn't matter which of these routers I use as a gateway or which version of firmware before 56_2, all of them had the same results as my ac3200 until 56_2, another thread.
Note your results may differ since some of this is based on location of equipment and signal level as well as other factors.

 

[chrismccoy]

what is the diff between

RT-AC88U and RT-AC3100

 

[alarsen77]

what is the diff between

RT-AC88U and RT-AC3100

The RT-AC88U has 8 gigabit lan ports and the antennas have the red outline in the opening for the ROG theme. Other than that as far as I can tell they are identical.

 

[cpu]

Before I got my ac3200 I lived in a 2 story with basement, with the AC-68 in the basement. I couldn't do much of anything from the second story until I put a router(AP) on the 1st story.

 

[Puppa]

Forgot to mention something--usually router antennas are designed for stronger horizontal signals. If you need to reach the basement well, you may need to jockey things around a bit, which in turn will cause sacrifices in the other directions. It becomes more and more clear that having enough access points is #1. My 3200 has been better than my other ASUS routers, but it's definitely not trouble-free. I'm still having issues on the latest firmware, though it's far more liveable than it was back when it first came out, when I was rebooting it multiple times nightly, if it didn't reboot all on its own (I can still hear my son's cries of pain as he was booted off Xbox matches randomly). I am definitely interested in the new crop of routers, but more so for the 40% cpu boost than anything else. That the firmware major rev has jumped 2 versions, however, gives me pause as I have never ever had good luck with brand new firmware from any manufacturer. I count myself lucky if I get a good 6 months in between the time the firmware stabilizes and my hardware burns out.

My 3200 has remained up for a full month...once. But when it crashed I had to power cycle every network appliance that was connected to get it to come back up. I was encouraged by a 7-day stint I had with the .9135 firmware, but with the latest firmware (.9313), it looks like 2 nights is when things start to go south, with random bandwidth drops for no good reason that I can ascertain, other than maybe that my neighbours have routers running like +20dB over normal/legal signal levels (I am receiving them at -10dB in the middle of my house, something I don't get close to even standing right next to my own router). Their routers identify as TP-Link, BTW, though I'm not sure whether that is accurate, because I've seen some pretty obscure MAC manufacturer codes come in over the past year using the same SSIDs, including "Xerox" and "Google Fiber," which isn't even anywhere nearby.

I hope you have better luck than I have in getting your network permanently stable.