[SOLVED] ASUS AC88U - Upgrade as main router for AIMesh?

[bmouthboyo]

I am looking to upgrade my Wifi range so my garden and garage get a decent signal that doesn't cause drop outs when using wifi on the boundary in my home. I currently use a cheap XINGDONGCHI DC Wireless-N 300Mbps WiFi Range Extender from Amazon as an extended range / AP and gave it the same SSID credentials as my main Asus AC88U, connected with gigabit Ethernet cable.

It works OK when I am near it but seems to cause issues when in between, especially my wife's Macbook so I assume our devices are bouncing between the 2.

I am now therefore looking into replacing the cheap AP with a ASUS AIMesh device, but a little lost where to start.

I have had my AC88U for about 4 years now and using Merlin. Overall I have been impressed with it's performance, with my ISP router in bridge mode providing WAN access. Should I look to replace the AC88U with a newer 'main' router and retire it to being the extender? or does it still stand up as a good main router in the current market?

I am a bit confused by 'Wifi 6' and 'Wifi 5' etc but given it's dual band do I stick with that? Should I look to AX?

Most devices where possible I have connected on the LAN with Ethernet cable, so the only Wifi is a MAcbook Air, Macbook, iPhone 10. Broadband speed is only 50Mbps ADSL.

Any advice appreciated, thanks.

 

[Lutfij]

I think if you were to see if it has any more firmware updates, then go for it and see if that prolongs the life of the router where it stands. If you're feeling that you want more, then look into investing on a newer platform, hardware for your wireless needs.

FYI, WiFi 6 is 802.11ax. WiFi 5 is 802.11ac.

 

[bill001g]

Mesh is mostly marketing term for repeater. Everyone already bought a repeater and the only way they could sell you another one was to call it mesh.

This is not 100% true but the only real advantage to some of the mesh systems is they use one radio to talk to the router and the second to talk to the end clients. Unless the device adds a completely separate radio for the connection back to the router it is not real different than many of the older repeaters. This is why you must read the fine print.

You still have extra radio signals competing for limited bandwidth.

Mesh does not fix the problem of device roaming. The end device is still 100% in charge of what it talks to. The largest issues is the end device can not scan for other sources while it is using the radio to pass data. You to a point can set the levels where the device looks with a roaming aggressiveness setting but if you set it too low it can jump back and forth. Every times it scans even if it reconnects with the same source it will cause a small outage.

Not sure what you best solution is. Key to a repeater is placement. It must be close enough to the main router to get good signal but also needs to provide the repeated signal to the areas the main router can not reach.

The best solution tend to be using ethernet between the router and repeater. This is better called a AP than a repeater. This solves the extra radio signal back to the main router. You can also use powerline networks instead of ethernet.

There really is not magic solution for this problem. The problem with remote coverage is more interference from everyone around you. If nobody was around a weak signal would be fine. When you add repeaters all you did was add more radios that interfere with your neighbors so they add repeaters.

It is like trying to solve the problem of the neighbors loud stereo by turning up the volume.

 

[bmouthboyo]

Sorry I didn’t make it clearer but I have the cheap AP Ethernet wires already, but there seems to be an in between area our devices frequently loose connection.

Is my AC88U still a decent main router? And what other router would work well as an AIMesh with it?

 

[bill001g]

Don't get conned by the marketing.

The asus router is fine it has as good coverage as any other name brand router.

Since you are already using ethernet make sure the current repeater you have is running only in AP mode. When they run in repeater mode they transmit out extra wifi signal that causes interference.

If it is still bad maybe the repeater is poor quality you could buy a actual AP but any inexpensive router can be used as a AP. You only care about the wifi radios you do not need any extra fancy software like your asus has. It does not need any silly mesh features. All devices are on the same network just by using a AP.

This is how corporate installations have worked since the start of wifi. If mesh was so good you would have see it years ago since money is not a issue for these companies.

If you still lose connection even with a new AP, try to change the SSID to different ones that way you know what your device is connecting to. You will have to manually switch but in general a person is smarter than any software in your device and I would hope you are not walking around your house watch netflix. Can see the guy explaining how he fell down the stairs to the hospital.