Looking for a wireless router - Range is key

[Trakis]

Buddy of mind lives in a house with 5 other people. He was looking for a good router that has great range and can support that many devices. Range is the main thing here.

He was looking at the ASUS RT-AC87U. Would that work or would he need something more robust? Does he consider getting a standalone AP perhaps even?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[George Mulligan]

Almost any router available today will support your friend's needs. 5 Users is not an issue in any case. Most of the routers today come with an option to network with WLAN standard 802.11 b/g/n modes. The B mode will offer the greatest range but the slowest speed (11Mbps). N mode will offer the shortest range but the fastest speed (300Mbps). G mode is in the middle. Having lived in a 5 bedroom, 3500 sq. ft. house, N mode was providing good coverage throughout the house. But this is something you can experiment with and settle on the best option.

 

[Trakis]

Thanks George. Would it change your advice if I told you that it's 6 people, each with a laptop and a smartphone... plus 5 ipads... plus two gaming consoles? Obviously not all will be online at once, but as many as 10 devices at once could be working.

Would that change anything?

 

[bill001g]

Which router you select will not make a huge difference just stay with the better known brands mostly so you get better support if there are software bugs.

The number of users you can get good performance on is more a function of radio bandwidth. 1 user copying files to a nas connected to your router can easily use 100% of the radio bandwidth. Assuming you have a large internet connection a few users watch HD netflix movies can easily degrade the network.

Now that compared to people who are checking their email and facebook posts. You can likely get more than 30 low volume users on 1 router.

The only way to really solve the radio bandwidth problem is to use multiple radios in the router. That is why they make those crazy expensive tri band routers. They have 1 2.4g radio and 2 5g radios. That means you can run 3 people at maximum rates. You can also use multiple routers running as AP and get more radios that way...there still are only so many radio channels so you can only go so far.

 

[George Mulligan]

As bill001g wrote, you can get a dual-band or tri-band router to increase wifi bandwidth if there's really that much activity at once. Regardless, you'll be limited by the total bandwidth of the internet connection.

This sounds like a college dorm room situation. Whatever it is, there will have to be some usage rules among the users, so feathers don't get ruffled.