Help me understand and select a wireless router

[leon_nerd]

I have a small house. My primary modem is in the basement and I have wireless access around the house. The only problematic area are couple of bedrooms on the first floor where the wi-fi signal is pretty much dead. I have CAT5 socket in one of the bedrooms. I am planning to connect a wi-fi router in that CAT5 socket to get rid of the dead spots.

I was considering getting the ASUS AC1750 Dual-Band Wireless Gigabit Router but it is a little over my budget. I was then browsing and came across TP-LINK 300Mbps Wireless N Router (TL-WR841N).

Now, I am planning to connect couple of laptops and 3 phones to this wi-fi router. I watch a lot of netflix and shows online. I am wondering if the TP-LINK router will be able to handle it or not. I am tech savvy but this is my first time dealing with wireless routers. So any help/ recommendation is welcomed.

Thanks.

 

[bill001g]

First I would run your second router as a AP but you can ignore that for now because all routers can run as AP just something to consider later.

The speed you get out of a router is not just the router. The first thing is your internet connection. You will get little benefit running a 802.11ac router if you have a 10m dsl connection but if you have one of those nice 1g google fiber connection you do need a high end router to use it especially via wireless. Next your end device have a impact. Lets say you have a really old device that only supports 802.11g and you buy a expensive 802.11ac router it will work fine but the 802.11ac router will slow itself down to the 802.11g speed when talking to that device. It works but you are not using any of the features you paid extra for.

I am going to guess the 300m router will be good enough but it really depends how tight money is. A dual band router is only slightly more and it might give you more options if you run into interference. Of course it does no good to get a dual band router if your end device can not use the 5g band.