RT-AC68U vs. RT-AC88u for WiFi?

[pegasusg]

Good day everyone.

I want to have WiFi upstairs and downstairs in my house. After doing quite a lot of research, I have narrowed it down to these two routers. Firstly, I’d like to know if I can plug the internet cable into the WAN port on one router (68U), and then use an Ethernet cable to connect to the other router upstairs in AP mode (88U), and if it’ll work if I use one of each. The deal we bought is 100/100 speed, and there might be about 9 devices connected to the downstairs WiFi maximum, and about 12 devices to the upstairs WiFi maximum (if everyone uses every phone, tablet, TV, and console at the same time, which I doubt will happen). Basically, is the 88U worth getting? There might be 1-3 things connected by Ethernet, but that’s about it. I know it has features that are useful but aren’t supported a lot yet, so is it worth buying for the future? I might use a NAS, but probably not.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance.

 

[bill001g]

Not likely is my guess.

Most the new router features are smoke and mirrors. Many manufactures are starting to use non standard features like qam1024 and other things from a new standard called 802.11ad which is still years away. The standard is not set so you run into the same issue people had buying the Pre-802.11n stuff where the standard changed just before it was released and the devices has issues with compatibility. Buying proprietary extension does not future proof anything unless you are lucky.

The problem with this is your end devices must also use these non standard extensions or it will just drop back to the older standards. Even within the standard 802.11ac it is very rare to find a end device that has 4 antenna and can use 4x4 mimo.

Most end devices only have 2 antenna so the connection will drop back to speed a router with only 2 antenna can run.

For most people a router at 1200 or 1750 will match most end devices. Even the 1900 speed is using a non standard extension of 802.11n on the 2.4g band and vendors like apple refuse to put support in for non standard things.

 

[pegasusg]

Thanks really much for replying. So, are there any other routers that you recommend that are cheaper but will provide the same features as the 68U? If possible, QOS, beamforming and a 3.0 USB port would be useful.

 

[bill001g]

Beamforming is very unclear is it really does much the gain is so small. Again beamforming must be supported by the end device.

QoS in general is a bandaid that is used to hide the problem that you have overloaded your internet connection. The only true fix is to buy more bandwidth. It depends how large your internet is. If it is very large you likely do not have a problem but even turning the QoS option on can degrade your connect. Many of the newest routers use hardware acceleration to get the speeds over 200mbps and if you use many of the firewall or QoS feature you go back to CPU based and limit your top speeds.

USB 3 support is nice but you will likely bottleneck due to cpu or other functions in the router. Although they seem to like to put a bunch of features on routers if you actually want performance a real NAS will outperform any router.....then again a NAS makes a horrible router.

For features many of the asus routers run merlin firmware. It does not have all the feature of say dd-wrt but it has the more important ones and most important it has support for the hardware nat acceleration which dd-wrt does not.

 

[pegasusg]

Thanks for your explanation. What is a NAS exactly, and can you buy additional bandwidth without buying a new router? I thought those features (like QOS/beamforming) would improve the speed immediately, so thanks for giving extra info about that. I think the 88U is way too expensive, so do you think the 68U will have good performance? Thank you.

 

[bill001g]

If you currently get the speed you buy from your ISP you will never go faster. You need to test on wired though Wifi is affected by your house too much.

The 68u can run on gigabit internet connections on wired. Almost all routers because of the hardware nat acceleration can now keep up with any internet connection.

On WiFi there are way to many variables to guess. Your house is the main issue but as I mentioned above the end devices will limit your speed before most routers do.

 

[pegasusg]

Thanks for all your advice. I’ve decided to go with the 68U. Would you recommend Merlin or DD-WRT on it?

 

[bill001g]

Merlin is extremely stable compared to dd-wrt. The other main feature is that merlin has the hardware nat acceleration and dd-wrt does not....something about open source drivers. DD-WRT has many more feature but you need to see if you need them.

Even on the factory image the nat acceleration disables stuff. The page that shows you the utilization lies because the traffic is bypassing the CPU. You also can not use most the QoS or firewall features unless the nat hardware acceleration is disabled. Be nice if you did not have to choose but it really only impacts very fast internet connections.

 

[Vanpotheos]

Beamforming is very unclear is it really does much the gain is so small.

... Huh?

What!?

Re-reading that 3 or 4 times got me triggered. Sorry if you don't speak English natively, I don't want to discourage you from trying. But holy hell, man. That has to be the most perfectly misformed sentence I've ever read.