Wireless Router recommendations

[marksmargolis]

Hello guys and gals, I'm looking for some feedback on what you know/use as your wireless router at home. I got a ASUS RT-AC5300 a while back based on great reviews on several Pc/Gaming websites and a solid 4 stars on Amazon. I have been fighting with it ever sense. The 5ghz networks drop all the time and I when I went to find solutions on the internet I found that a great many people have the same issue and ASUS has done nothing. I even tried a third-party firmware called Asuswrt-Merlin and it worked well for about 2 weeks. Now I am seeing the same issue with the new firmware. I tried setting it to restart once a week but that is not working. I know it’s not the Walls or where the router is as the 2.4ghz works like a champ and never drops. I have over a dozen wireless devices some for home automation and some for media streaming (Smart TV, Xbox, Ect.). I have been doing research on a new router specifically looking for reports that the wireless drops and every Tri-Band (want Tri to split up the traffic) router that sites like PC MAG and Maxpc recommend all seem to have this issue when I dig into it. I am looking for a Gamer friendly MU-MIMO tri-band router that I can rely on the 5ghz networks. I don’t need USB, Printer ports or lots of ethernet ports as I have all that covered, just a solid router. Thank you for any input you can provide.

Chargerman

 

[kanewolf]

I think this is a very interesting article about the non-value of MU-MIMO -- https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33100-why-you-don-t-need-mu-mimo And you may have seen it if you have already used Merlin.

Why don't you buy discrete components? A wired router, like an edgerouter or a microtik and then get a Ubiquiti AP to handle the wireless.

 

[vmfantom]

Hello guys and gals, I'm looking for some feedback on what you know/use as your wireless router at home. I got a ASUS RT-AC5300 a while back based on great reviews on several Pc/Gaming websites and a solid 4 stars on Amazon. I have been fighting with it ever sense. The 5ghz networks drop all the time and I when I went to find solutions on the internet I found that a great many people have the same issue and ASUS has done nothing. I even tried a third-party firmware called Asuswrt-Merlin and it worked well for about 2 weeks. Now I am seeing the same issue with the new firmware. I tried setting it to restart once a week but that is not working. I know it’s not the Walls or where the router is as the 2.4ghz works like a champ and never drops. I have over a dozen wireless devices some for home automation and some for media streaming (Smart TV, Xbox, Ect.). I have been doing research on a new router specifically looking for reports that the wireless drops and every Tri-Band (want Tri to split up the traffic) router that sites like PC MAG and Maxpc recommend all seem to have this issue when I dig into it. I am looking for a Gamer friendly MU-MIMO tri-band router that I can rely on the 5ghz networks. I don’t need USB, Printer ports or lots of ethernet ports as I have all that covered, just a solid router. Thank you for any input you can provide.

Chargerman

Tri-band is a mess on a router like the RT-AC5300. Since it's a square PCB and the documentation from test reports is fairly poor, you can't know which 5 GHz band is interleaved with 2.4 GHz on which radio chain, and consequently can't do much if the antennas are causing destructive inteference. It was built for looks. I don't know why anyone really needs two 5 GHz bands, since that setup usually implies 1. that one band is at DFS or some other lower spectrum that has stricter transmit power limits, or 2. that you can't hope to run it in 160 MHz widths (which would be rare in the US anyway due to weather radar). Just use MU-MIMO to split up the traffic, rather than a second 5 GHz band that hamstrings carrier sensing algorithms on both 5 GHz bands for the sake of gamer marketing.

The Netgear R7800's throughput in MU-MIMO versus SU-MIMO seems very good even with 15-16 connected devices per this review. It has a hugely powerful CPU (1.7 GHz), 128 MB of flash storage and 512 MB of RAM, which is definitely better than most prosumer routers.

As for UniFi APs distributed over a PoE switch, I'm not sure the specs or reviews would really back up that idea for your usage case, and they aren't MU-MIMO in any case so they wouldn't fit your needs. UniFi UAP-AC-PROs would be like scattering a bunch of mediocre routers all over the house when all you need is one prosumer router. UniFi APs skimp on CPU (600 MHz), flash storage (16 MB) and RAM (256 MB). Orbi and Google WiFi outclass them in meshed throughput, and the 370-412 Mbps in throughput they might eke out at zero distance in SU-MIMO is a good deal less than the 530-620 Mbps the R7800 can pull and is basically what you'd get from a $30-60 standalone router (which they are, in essence, with the addition of PoE power). The difference between a 1.7 GHz CPU with the R7800 and 600 MHz with the UAP-AC-PRO is pretty stark, so the throughput disparity might come as no surprise.

If you didn't need MU-MIMO (and it's not like you do, for the reasons Kanewolf points out per the SNB article), then the Asus RT-AC88U has great transmit power, and you can set it in bridge mode with another to potentially get a nearly unheard-of 912 Mbps of throughput over the air, which might speak to better RF engineering on that build versus the RT-AC5300. (You got your workhorses, and you got your showhorses.)