[SOLVED] Hardwired access point - does the router matter?

[Matthew_246]

Hey everyone. I live in a stacked townhouse and I'm trying to get Wi-Fi down to my garage (basically my living space is 4 floors up from the garage).

Currently I have a Asus RT-AC88U router but the Wi-Fi does not get all the way down to the garage. However the internet feedpoint from the ISP is in the garage, so currently it routes through a CAT5e cable in the walls all the way up to the router (I have FIOS so there is no modem). I was thinking about buying a cheaper router (Asus RT-AC66U) and installing that in the garage and connecting the feedpoint to the WAN on this router instead of the 88U. I want to use the CAT5e cable that routes up through the walls to connect the 88U to one of the ports on the garage router. The 88U would be configured to act as an access point.

Everything I've read online says to use the nicer, more featured router as your main router, but in this case I'd be using it as the access point (the 88U). Since it's hardwired and not a wireless AP does it even matter? I really don't want to put the nicer router in the garage just to serve 1 client.

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

In general if you use the device as a AP you lose a lot of the features. Mostly stuff like QoS or parental controls or vpn. Some feature like NAS and a couple of other things will still function when you use a router as a AP.

You will have to verify that the 66u is new enough but asus runs a single image on all their routers. This means they all get any new software enhancement when they update the newest models. So both router should be the same.

The main difference between the 66u and 88u is the wifi and all that function stays with the AP. In real life installs I bet you do not see a lot of difference in wifi performance. The key thing is it is highly likely your end devices can not use the features of the 88u. It is extremely rare for example to find a end device with 4 antenna so it can't run 4x4 mimo anyway. There are also some non standard wifi encodings in the 88u that few devices support.

The 88u does have more cpu power than the 66u so if you are going to do something like vpn that uses lots of cpu power the 88u needs to be your main router

 

[Matthew_246]

In general if you use the device as a AP you lose a lot of the features. Mostly stuff like QoS or parental controls or vpn. Some feature like NAS and a couple of other things will still function when you use a router as a AP.

You will have to verify that the 66u is new enough but asus runs a single image on all their routers. This means they all get any new software enhancement when they update the newest models. So both router should be the same.

The main difference between the 66u and 88u is the wifi and all that function stays with the AP. In real life installs I bet you do not see a lot of difference in wifi performance. The key thing is it is highly likely your end devices can not use the features of the 88u. It is extremely rare for example to find a end device with 4 antenna so it can't run 4x4 mimo anyway. There are also some non standard wifi encodings in the 88u that few devices support.

The 88u does have more cpu power than the 66u so if you are going to do something like vpn that uses lots of cpu power the 88u needs to be your main router

Thanks! I do not use anything special. I just run a bunch of smart devices, a few streaming boxes, and some computers off the 88U. I don't have a VPN and I have QoS disabled.