A little advice appreciated on my upgrade path/choice.

[greybeard]

Good Morning (well it is here in Spain).

I have been having issues recently with my AiMesh (RT-AC86U and RT-AC68U). And upon examining the Merlin site see they are soon to be EOL.

I am recently retired (from IT but not comms) and our home net usage has changed substantially from web browsing and home working to a lot of music streaming and recreational video in 4K. No gaming.

Read as much as I could on here and elsewhere and have decided to simply go for broke and get a pair of ZenWifi XT12 - a big part being the bandwidth and using 5G-2 as dedicated backhaul as running a cable is complicated (not immposible if it becomes absolutely necesary).
Device positioning is awkward as the FTTH (1Gb bidirectional) is in a small corner office in a semi-basement and most of the heavy useage is in the lounge which is directly above - although we've always needed some form of bridge to get a reasonable signal even though the TV etc are basically directly above the FTTH router - A thick floor with a fair amount of steel in!.

I'll use the RJ45 connections for all heavy data transfer devices.

I am hoping this alone will resolve the only wierd dark area in my wife's office - One currently filled with a homeplug type device - OK for home office and a bit of light surfing but not much more.

But if not what is the general opinion on reusing the ac86 (with or without the ac68) as a range extender/bridge?

Or should I just suck it up and get a third triband device (not an XT12 obviously) - If so would appreciate a recomendation.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Keep in mind that the higher 5 GHz bands have poorer penetration ability than the lower bands, but as I presume you already know that neither band is great. However, if your current hardware is doing the job, there's no reason why the XT12's should work any worse.
You won't see a huge improvement in range going from 802.11ac to 802.11ax though, but the XT12's have a different antenna configuration, so maybe that'll help.

Using EOL hardware as wireless bridges is perfectly fine imho, as they're not facing the internet directly.
In our previous place I had one AP on each floor (tree storey house, but only 2-3 rooms on each floor), as the signal simply wasn't strong enough otherwise. Over the years, I've been using a mix of hardware from TP-Link, Securifi, Netgear and Asus and never had any issues roaming between the various APs. Many of the AP's got EOL:ed over the years and I ran OpenWRT on some of the TP-Link gear. I would give it a go first and see how it works, rather than spending loads of money on something that might not bring any real world benefits.

 

[Tech9]

not immposible if it becomes absolutely necesary

Running wires will be the right upgrade path opening options beyond disposable consumer gear.

 

[theoak]

What about something like Powerline and/or MOCA and using that as "ethernet" backhaul between your nodes? Powerline you may be able to get a gig depending on the electrical layout of your home. MOCA I think is up to 2.5 gig now. With MOCA you would obviously need an available RG6 run between your wifi main/nodes, or if you have some sort of switch in the mix.

(Okay, reading your post again you do have powerline (homeplug). What generation is it? There have been some improvements.)