Question AIMesh

Aug 9, 2022
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Howdy! I currently have frontier fiber, and they had me move my router from the living room to the office. I now have deadzones in my back yard thanks to the fireplace, as well as my security cameras in the front yard sometimes go out. My router is the rt-ax86u. I’m looking at getting a second router, and doing wired backhaul. Do you guys have suggestions on what the second router should be? Do I need another rt-ax86u? Or should I be looking at something cheaper? Thanks guys! I’m new btw!
 
You need nothing real special you are going to run it as a AP. It mostly depends on what your devices support. For example if none of the devices can use wifi6 then your second router does not have to support it. In general a router with a 1200-1450 match most end devices.
If you have a old router laying around try that first maybe it will be good enough.

Don't worry about the mesh garbage that is mostly for repeaters when you connect to the main router via wifi. You always have 1 network and devices not the network control when the devices roam. This is nothing new and has existed since the begining of wifi, the manufactures just want you to think "mesh" is some new technology.
 
Aug 9, 2022
6
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Going back a step - Question:

What/why was Frontier's reason for having you move the router?
They just laid fiber, and needed to put the ONT outside, and have a power supply from my office go through the wall to power the ONT. They then wanted me to plug from the office phone jack to the router. No modem is in the chain. Just the rt-ax86u.
 
Aug 9, 2022
6
0
10
You need nothing real special you are going to run it as a AP. It mostly depends on what your devices support. For example if none of the devices can use wifi6 then your second router does not have to support it. In general a router with a 1200-1450 match most end devices.
If you have a old router laying around try that first maybe it will be good enough.

Don't worry about the mesh garbage that is mostly for repeaters when you connect to the main router via wifi. You always have 1 network and devices not the network control when the devices roam. This is nothing new and has existed since the begining of wifi, the manufactures just want you to think "mesh" is some new technology.
I’m going to to direct wire from the main router, to the new router. I’ll probably put the new router in the bedroom on the other side of the house. I have LG smart washers, dryers, fridges, Oled TVs, monster PC(that is wired to modem via Ethernet already), several consoles, MacBooks, IPads, IPhones, Nest Cameras, doorbell, lock, thermostat and some legacy stuff like roomba.
 
The number of device doesn't matter a lot it is the total bandwidth they are using. I guess if you were talking 100s of devices it might make a difference. Most those things are also very simple they can't use stuff like 4x4 mimo so it doesn't pay to buy a router than can support it.
Any dual band router that has a even a 1200 number is going to support encoding better than those end devices. It is very rare for end device for example to even support 3x3 mimo. That is pretty much the difference between the 1200 and 1450 number.

What you can do is put some of the devices on the 2.4g radio and others on the 5g if you want to balance them. I guess if you really think you are going to use a lot of bandwidth you could buy a tri-band router that has 2 5g radios.....then again you can get 2 cheap routers an get a total of 4 radios for less than the tri-band routers.
 
Aug 9, 2022
6
0
10
The number of device doesn't matter a lot it is the total bandwidth they are using. I guess if you were talking 100s of devices it might make a difference. Most those things are also very simple they can't use stuff like 4x4 mimo so it doesn't pay to buy a router than can support it.
Any dual band router that has a even a 1200 number is going to support encoding better than those end devices. It is very rare for end device for example to even support 3x3 mimo. That is pretty much the difference between the 1200 and 1450 number.

What you can do is put some of the devices on the 2.4g radio and others on the 5g if you want to balance them. I guess if you really think you are going to use a lot of bandwidth you could buy a tri-band router that has 2 5g radios.....then again you can get 2 cheap routers an get a total of 4 radios for less than the tri-band routers.
I just need to increase my range, my speeds are fine until it’s night time. Frontier called me and told me that their speeds are night time are due to an upstream bottleneck, so that is on their end.
 
A remote router running as a AP, ie connected via ethernet...will greatly improve your coverage. This is the gold standard for wifi networks and is what all large companies do.

Because of the complexity in actually finding things like usage it tends to be trial and error. I would just buy a inexpensive router and try it. You then tune it from there. I doubt you would ever need it but say in a large classroom they put in multiple AP with the radio power adjusted to split the room into mulitple zones. For home use you seldom need more than 1 AP unless you need another to cover a different part of the house that neither the router or the new AP covers.

But you start with 1 simple router and go from there. You do not need a actual AP, the main feature of a AP is it is powered over ethernet so you can say mount it on the ceiling. You do not need any special features like mesh. A $30-$50 router will likely work just fine.
 
Aug 9, 2022
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Frontier just came by, and connected the fiber via coaxial existing in the house. I was able to move the router back into the living room in the middle of the house. They converted the coaxial in the living room to ethernet via a moca adapter. I didn't need a modem in this case either, so I just plugged the moca adapter into the router via ethernet. Now my entire house is covered since the Asus rt-ax86u is once again in the center off the house, instead of being on the far side. As a result, I don't think I will be needing another router for coverage.