Need Help to Select a Wireless Router

[MKASHOU]

I want to give you my circumstances first before I ask my question. I have over a 5000 square foot home and I have 4-5 people on the internet at the same time at any given time. I need something with a lot more power and a pretty big range where I dont have to have extenders.

I have been looking around and the consensus is these 3 routers are the top 3, in no particular order, ASUS RT AC87U, Linksys WRTAC1900 and Netgear Nighhawk X6. Correct me if im wrong?

Will those fit my needs? I am looking for something with much more speed and range.

Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[kanewolf]

No single router can be assured of covering a space that large. You should look at having multiple access points connected via ethernet cable or powerline adapters. If you use something like the UniFi system from Ubiquiti, you have the best chance of being able to roam between WIFI access points.

Even with a top end router, your client device will limit your speed. An AC router will make very little impact to a 4 year old laptop. Remember that boosting your router power won't change the transmit power on your client devices.

 

[MKASHOU]

No single router can be assured of covering a space that large. You should look at having multiple access points connected via ethernet cable or powerline adapters. If you use something like the UniFi system from Ubiquiti, you have the best chance of being able to roam between WIFI access points.

Even with a top end router, your client device will limit your speed. An AC router will make very little impact to a 4 year old laptop. Remember that boosting your router power won't change the transmit power on your client devices.

Okay thank you very much. That makes a whole lot of sense, but my router is fairly old and doesnt seem to have the juice to be able to handle what we are doing. So im looking for longer range, more power and more speed.

 

[kanewolf]

WIFI will have issues with many devices. WIFI is half-duplex (send or receive but not both simultaneously). With many devices having to time share the available bandwidth each device gets less and less. If you can move devices to the 5Ghz band (that could require a new router) then you can free up time in the 2.4Ghz bandwidth. 5Ghz will not penetrate walls as well as 2.4Ghz so the range of 5Ghz is usually less.

An AC1900 router is a theoretical max using the newest WIFI clients and optimal locations. There is still only 450Mbits max available on 2.4Ghz. If you have a single stream device (150Mbit max) or worse yet a WIFI G (54 Mbit max) then it takes longer (time) to transmit the same 1K byte. During that (longer) time no other device gets any time. You need to setup multiple access points and distribute the load. Especially move any wireless G to their own AP.