Would a cheap AC1900 work for AP?

[banz]

Currently have 1 x ac68u. I have mix and match of clients on 2.4G and 5G. Low bandwidth like Smart home devices are all on 2.4G. I'm having a little wifi issue with the furthest room that contains my gaming PC and basically servers that uses high bandwidth. The wifi is weakest in this room and I'm not getting good signal. My phone is currently showing -73dBM.

Originally I wanted to get another ac68u. But I'm wondering do I really need to spend that much money as I'm only using it as an AP? All I need is another AP which will be hard wired to the router. I'm also thinking of running 2 cables so I can bond them. There are some really cheap ones around $50 on amazon.

 

[ColinTaylor]

The RT-AC68U doesn't support link aggregation AFAIK. I think there are some unofficial hacks but I wouldn't rely on that. 1Gb should be more than enough, no need to over-complicate matters.

 

[CaptainSTX]

See if you can find a deal on the T-Mobil branded AC68. I use it as my primary AP. Has worked great for over four years with the stock firmware. In this configuration is works great.

Be aware that you can not without great difficulty convert it to run either stock ASUS firmware or Merlin and if you insist on trying it don't look to this site for help.

 

[banz]

TM sells around $50 on craigslist+ ebay. Unsure if I want to buy something that can't go on openwrt or merlin. I know I won't be using it for now but I kinda like to keep my options opened.

A refurb ac68u is around $85.

 

[banz]

The RT-AC68U doesn't support link aggregation AFAIK. I think there are some unofficial hacks but I wouldn't rely on that. 1Gb should be more than enough, no need to over-complicate matters.

Oh I didn't know it doesn't do LAGG. Hmm. 1G is currently enough but I had plans to upgrade my Fios to 1G. Which won't leave enough bandwidth for my internal network. However saying that, I probably will have to start hard wiring the devices if I go down that route.

 

[L&LD]

Oh I didn't know it doesn't do LAGG. Hmm. 1G is currently enough but I had plans to upgrade my Fios to 1G. Which won't leave enough bandwidth for my internal network. However saying that, I probably will have to start hard wiring the devices if I go down that route.

Huh?

 

[CaptainSTX]

Oh I didn't know it doesn't do LAGG. Hmm. 1G is currently enough but I had plans to upgrade my Fios to 1G. Which won't leave enough bandwidth for my internal network. However saying that, I probably will have to start hard wiring the devices if I go down that route.

Have you ever tried to saturate a 1 Gig link? Unless you have top of the line devices hardwired and are trying to do multiple backups to a NAS and the NAS is top of the line also good luck. As for saturating the link over the Internet the only mainstream site/ application that I am aware of that will saturate your download speed is a speedtest. With a 1 Gig connection you probably could stream over 100 Netflix 4K streams.

 

[banz]

I can saturate a 1G if I don't throttle the torrents. I work in IT so I hoard retired servers including storage systems. I shouldn't really be calling these enterprise storage as nas. Some of them even have infiniband in them. I also do offsite backup and sync my nas to remote datacenter. But anyway, it's only the inital sync will saturate the link. After that it is just incremental.

It's the 1G between the router and AP that I'll saturate easily. When I had traffic analyzer on a year ago I was pushing 100-150G of data a day. It also doesn't help that someone in the family likes to watch p2p tv.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I can saturate a 1G if I don't throttle the torrents. I work in IT so I hoard retired servers including storage systems. I shouldn't really be calling these enterprise storage as nas. Some of them even have infiniband in them. I also do offsite backup and sync my nas to remote datacenter. But anyway, it's only the inital sync will saturate the link. After that it is just incremental.

It's the 1G between the router and AP that I'll saturate easily. When I had traffic analyzer on a year ago I was pushing 100-150G of data a day. It also doesn't help that someone in the family likes to watch p2p tv.

You are truly a member of the 1% of the 1% for data useage.

To facilitate this amount of data I would look at installing a couple of fiber links in your home.

With that much data useage I hope you have an un capped Internet connection or your IT job pays very well.

 

[ColinTaylor]

You'd be hard pressed to find a wireless access point, especially for $50, that provides link aggregation on its Ethernet connections. At that price point you'll be lucky to get gigabit!

If you're serious about pumping that volume of data across your LAN you might want to consider buying a managed switch that has link aggregation and put it between your router and your LAN.

 

[Clark Griswald]

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/2019-wlpc-videos.56010/

I understand that the cool kids already have dual 10Gbps internet connections.