Need Help Setting up 2 Asus RT-AC68U routers on same network

[muddbog]

I was looking for some suggestions as to how I should set up my Network. I've just purchased two Asus RT-AC68U routers which should be arriving in the next few days, I've read numerous forums on setting up this router but each thread contradicts the next...

What I have is an older German house with concrete walls and floors, modem/Router is on the second floor in the office. I have an older linksys wrt54g (can't believe this thing still works) router in the workshop hooked up to the modem Via Ethernet and a D-Link DGL-4500 in the living room on the 1st floor hooked up via Ethernet. Currently the D-Link has been rebooting under load... currently I have a separate wifi ssid for each device. port forwarding is enabled for the ps4.

What I would like is one wifi ssid for the entire house and shop, the modem will have the routing capability disabled and one of the asus Routers will take its place, the second Asus will be in the living room and the linksys will stay in the shop.

I am looking for the best setup for the 3 routers, in a way that the routers will be running at optimum performance with the largest range possible, fastest speeds in the vicinity of the router and without having to switch to a different wifi while moving throughout the house and shop... if possible. Any suggestions?

 

[bill001g]

You will never get seamless roaming but I will leave that to the end.

Pretty much you need to pick one device and have it run as the router all other need to be setup as AP. This mean you lose a lot of the feature on the second asus since you are converting it into a wireless switch and ignoring all the router features Not real sure you should run the wireless on the linksys. 802.11g does not play real well with 802.11n but if you have a dead spot I guess it is better than not having it.

If you decide to run the same of different SSID is mostly a mater of preference. When you have different SSID you the person can generally select the best connection. Unfortunately it means a manual intervention each time to do it.

Setting the same SSID and letting the computer select sound good but it is not that simple. They key problem is when you have the connection open the radio can not scan for other devices. If it would it would drop your session. Because of this it does not actually know there is better connection to switch to. The way it works in general is the connection will find the strongest ..hopefully..and connect to it. It then stays connected until the level pretty much gets unusable. It will then scan for the best connection again and connect. What commonly happens is you can connect to say the router downstairs walk upstairs and set you pc on the other wireless radio. The PC will stay connected to the router downstairs likely running pretty slow as long as the signal is above some threshold of good enough. You tend to manually reset the connection to get it to connect to the correct one.

You can not get the seamless roaming unless you buy high end commercial gear. Even these have issue with truly seamless roaming unless you install their custom wireless drivers. Still even the partial seamless roaming is much better than anything you can get on consumer or small business devices. Only very large enterprise customers can afford the price tags that go with those AP and controllers.

 

[muddbog]

Thanks for the quick reply. I guess I'm expecting too much from these routers... What kind of problems could I expect from running the linksys?

 

[bill001g]

Mostly that some device might prefer it over the asus. For some reason devices think a 802.11g signal is stronger than 802.11n. Then again it technically might be even though it does not display on the pc strength thing that way.

You may want to set the signal levels on the linksys as low as you can and still have it function in the area you want.

Most this can be avoided by careful channel selection but running 802.11n on the 2.4g band is tricky by itself. The now default is to use 40mhz channels and there is only 60mhz total. It pretty much limits you to 1 router/ap. You can change it to 20mhz but you will cut your maximum speed.
Then again you likely will have 20 neighbors on all the channels anyway.

 

[muddbog]

Figured I would let you know the routers are installed, one as the main and the other as an AP. The wifi on both is setup identical. I can walk from the first floor to the third floor with the same YouTube video playing... It appears to be transferring between wifi signals decently. I'm completely satisfied with this setup. I'm sold on these routers, strong signal even through the concrete walls and floors, very fast and I love the USB capabilities.

 

[Deb_15]

Figured I would let you know the routers are installed, one as the main and the other as an AP. The wifi on both is setup identical. I can walk from the first floor to the third floor with the same YouTube video playing... It appears to be transferring between wifi signals decently. I'm completely satisfied with this setup. I'm sold on these routers, strong signal even through the concrete walls and floors, very fast and I love the USB capabilities.

I have a d link router and 2 Asus RP-ac68U units. One of the Asus units is setup to extend the signal out to where I need it and I need to set up the other as a media bridge to recieve the signal and transfer it to my wired device. My question is - 'HOW" do I tell the 2nd unit to be a media bridge and find the signal coming it's way? I'm sorry it seems to be a simple thing I cannot figure out..... thanks for anyone who can give step by step how to do that info!