AC router advice

[wbond]

Long time lurker, first post. First off let me say thanks to Tim for this site. It has helped me numerous times and is one of the first sites I visit when I'm looking to make changes in my home network.

I'm thinking that it may be time for me to upgrade part of my wireless network to AC, but I'm not sure if it's worth the cost.

My existing setup consists of two wired segments connected through a wireless bridge. We have DSL and the phone line comes out of the wall in a fairly central place in our home. I'm using a Netgear WNDR3700 as the main wireless access point and the wireless coverage is good on both floors of our 3400 sq ft house. The wireless computers connect to the 2.4GHz network running on the 3700. Most of the other wireless devices are connected to an Actiontec Q1000 DSL modem acting as another 2.4GHz access point. I have these other devices on their own VLAN. On this side of the lan I also have a few servers and media devices connected via 1gig Ethernet.

Due to the construction of the home, vaulted ceilings, finished basement, etc. it would be difficult to run Ethernet to my office where I have a few more computers and servers. To connect the office side of the network to the rest of the house and internet I'm using a Dlink DAP-1522 in wireless bridge mode to connect to the 5GHz N network on the WNDR3700. This is the only device connected to the N wireless network.

The 5GHz wireless N signal is fairly strong and the connection has been surprisingly reliable. I can go months without rebooting either the WNDR3700 or the DAP-1522 and the connection never drops. My only complaint is the speed. It's faster than our internet connection 20Mbps down/0.8 up so that's not really an issue, but I'd like to be able to run some backups between the 2 segments without them taking forever. The speed as measured by iperf is about 50-60Mbps and Lan Speed Test shows it around 70Mbps.

My question is if it would be worthwhile for me to buy a couple of AC routers and use them on either end, one as an access point and the other as a bridge. I don't really need a router, using pfsense for that, but AC access points and bridges seem few and far between and also expensive. I figure two AC (probably AC1900) routers will be cheaper and may offer more flexibility. Ideally I'd like something that can separate different SSID's using VLAN's but I can work around that, as I am now, by plugging the different access points into different ports on my switches.

I'm mainly looking at either the Asus RT-AC68U or the Netgear R7000 and wondering if a pair of these will give me enough of a throughput boost to make the expense worthwhile. The distance between the two segments is only 20-25 feet, but there are a couple of wood frame/sheetrock walls in between. I can, and do at times, run 1gig Ethernet down the hallway and across the floor to connect the segments, but my wife isn't crazy about the idea for long periods of time. If I could double the throughput then I may consider it, more than that I'd probably move ahead.

Sorry for the long winded post, but I figured the background info is pertinent to the question.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Bill

edit: I have tried homeplug, but haven't found it any faster than the wireless N speed I'm already seeing.

 

[stevech]

Unless your user devices are 11ac, spending $$$ on an 11ac router is probably not a good investment now.

HomePlug (IP over power lines) has the goal of easy extension of the wired network rather than speed.

 

[Trip]

Hi Bill. First off, I'm a fan (as it seems you are, too) of segmenting duties to specific devices. So if you're using that Actiontec as your actual modem, I would use it only as such, and turn off wifi on the unit -- perhaps replacing that broadcast with a dedicated SSID from a multi-SSID/VLAN-capable AP elsewhere in the house?

Next, the 5Ghz throughput over the bridge is roughly half of what you *could* get from a full-strength single-stream 2.4Ghz connection (not even 2x2 or 3x3...). As a workaround, perhaps AV2 powerline is worth a shot (as steve suggested)? Yes, you could probably buy strong 3x3 MIMO 5Ghz gear, but like you said, I don't know if the throughput gains would be realized across the obstacles/distance. How about bridging on 2.4Ghz instead? Say, over channel 6, then do your AP broadcasting on channels 1/11 (or any mix of those three). You lose the potential max throughput of 5Ghz, yes, but what you lose in width of the pipe, you gain in distance/strength of the signal... just a thought.

 

[thiggins]

Glad you enjoy the site, Bill. Since you have a strong 5 GHz signal, a pair of AC routers used as a bridge should give you a nice bandwidth boost.

You can pick up a pair of AC1750 routers for close to $100 each. You don't need the 600 MHz in 2.4 GHz that AC1900 routers provide since you are just using 5 GHz for the bridge.

Before you give up on powerline, try the TP-LINK TL-PA-6010KIT. Best one I have tried yet and it seems to be aggressive about working around noise sources.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32454-tp-link-homeplug-head-to-head

 

[wbond]

Thanks for the replies all.

My plan, if I go ahead with it, would be to buy two AC devices, one for each side of the network.

I should have elaborated in the edit to my original post. We already do have homeplug as part of the network. My wife works from home and we need to have her employers computer connected to the internet, but it cannot be via wireless. Her office is next to mine so has the same limitation of not easily connecting via Ethernet. She's using an older Netgear homeplug device which is connected to its own VLAN in the center of the house to keep her traffic separate from the rest of the network. It's not very fast, but it's a little faster then our internet connection so does the job.

I had seen Tim's review of the TP-Link TL-PA6010KIT and was considering it when it went on sale at Newegg. I went ahead and bought it since I figured if it didn't work for me she could always use it. Unfortunately from my office it's no faster than my 5Ghz wireless connection and less steady. I am able to get a faster connection from one of the plugs I tried, but it's across the hallway and only slightly faster than the wireless. No loss though as I'll probably replace hers and keep the old pair for a spare.

As for the VLANs I wanted to keep the regular computers/servers on a different VLAN than the devices that I don't have as much control over, smartphones, kindles, media devices, etc. and my wife has her own for work.

The Actiontec was only being used as a modem, in transparent bridge mode with my pfsense box as the router. When I started setting up VLANs I needed a second wireless access point for the non-computer VLAN and found I could still use the Actiontec wireless and plug it into a smart switch to keep that wireless segment on its own VLAN. I've found the D-Link DGS-1100-08 switches to be good, inexpensive smart switches for VLAN use at about $50 for an 8 port gig version with browser based configuration.

Tim, thanks for mentioning AC1750 as an option. I honestly hadn't paid attention to how the numbers add up to get to AC1750, AC1900, etc. If I'm only going to use the 5Ghz band this may be an answer. The least expensive AC1750 I see on Newegg is the TP-Link Archer C7 which looks pretty good in the review on SNB. I didn't pay much attention at the time because I was thinking I wanted AC1900, but I noticed that Costco has the Netgear R6700 for $159.99. I can't much info about it, but did find a short thread on SNB http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17903.

The 2.4Ghz band is fairly crowded in our neighborhood, but I seem to have the 5Ghz band to myself, or at least can't detect any other 5Ghz networks which may be due to the lower range in this band. Range isn't really the issue I want to fix, but speed is. This leads me to think I'm better off with the 5Ghz band, but I'm no expert.

Thanks again for the replies. Sorry, I got a little long winded again...

Bill

 

[RogerSC]

You've gotten good advice from Tim, and yes, 5GHz. is a better better bet for speed than 2.4GHz., especially if 2.4GHz. is crowded in your area. Sounds to me like you're going in the right direction. Enjoy!

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the detailed update, Bill. Sorry the TP Link powerline adapter didn't work as well for you as I thought it would. If you have a newer home, AFCI breakers could be knocking down throughput. And those pesky USB wall wart power supplies produce noise disproportionate to their size! A little detective work could pay off with much improved powerline performance.

Yeah, give the Archer C7 a try. It's the least expensive new AC1750 router out there. AC1600 class routers also are 3x3 in 5 GHz.

 

[azazel1024]

A couple of Archer C7 in bridge mode should work awesome from everything I have heard, and the cheapest way to get an AC1750 bridge setup.

For performance expectations, don't expect the moon, but I would guess you should be able to see from around 100% faster to around 150% faster than what you are experiencing now.

At least based on my move from N600 to AC1750 (but only a 2:2 client), close in to the AC1750 router with 867Mbps link rate, I get about 110% faster performance over 300Mbps link rate with 5GHz N. The lowest gain I see over 300Mbps 5GHz 11n is 90% and the best is 140% at medium distance from the router.

So I'd guess you should see something in that range (90-140%), at least if you are moving from 450Mbps 11n to 1300Mbps 11ac. If you are moving from 300Mbps (sorry, not sure if the WNDR3700 is N600, N750 or N900), then I'd expect more like 130-180% faster. One other thing you can do if you need even MORE speed, is slap some small directional antennas, or just higher gain omni's on the C7/whatever router you go with. It won't gain you much, unless you go really high gain, but even some inexpensive 9dBi antennas might give another 10-25% boost in performance (especially if both ends have higher gain antennas).

 

[wbond]

I have tried plugging the TP Link powerline adapters into various plugs around the house. All I can say is our wiring must be strange. Some of the plugs closer to the router and even in the same room gave worse throughput than some farther away. The home was built in the late 70's and was added on to before we bought it, so may have been partially re-wired. There are a couple of AFCI breaker outlets and the one I tried did show much lower throughput than most of the regular outlets. I'll need to experiment some more and try moving both ends of the connection to different outlets before I give up on it.

The WNDR3700 only goes up to 300Mbps on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands, so I have more room to move up, I hope, if I go to AC.

If anyone knows of a consumer grade wireless AC router than can separate different SSID's into separate VLAN's I could possibly replace both the WNDR3700 and the wireless on the Actiontec modem. I'm not opposed to using alternative firmware. I considered getting a more of a business class access point to get this feature, but to get the speed I'm looking for seems like too much of a price jump.

Bill

 

[azazel1024]

I have tried plugging the TP Link powerline adapters into various plugs around the house. All I can say is our wiring must be strange. Some of the plugs closer to the router and even in the same room gave worse throughput than some farther away. The home was built in the late 70's and was added on to before we bought it, so may have been partially re-wired. There are a couple of AFCI breaker outlets and the one I tried did show much lower throughput than most of the regular outlets. I'll need to experiment some more and try moving both ends of the connection to different outlets before I give up on it.

The WNDR3700 only goes up to 300Mbps on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands, so I have more room to move up, I hope, if I go to AC.

If anyone knows of a consumer grade wireless AC router than can separate different SSID's into separate VLAN's I could possibly replace both the WNDR3700 and the wireless on the Actiontec modem. I'm not opposed to using alternative firmware. I considered getting a more of a business class access point to get this feature, but to get the speed I'm looking for seems like too much of a price jump.

Bill

Can't speak for OpenWRT, but I THINK you can do that with OpenWRT. You can at least do multiple SSIDs (at least primary and secondary) with Archer C7, and the C7 does have OpenWRT support.

Might be able to do it with Netgear R7000 and DD-WRT as well.

 

[wbond]

Problem solved, although not in the way I expected. DSL service got flaky a few days ago and had to have a new line run from outside. I had them run the line to my office and moved the equipment that I was trying to bridge to into the office. Now I have almost the whole network on copper. I was able to use the TP-Link TL-PA6010KIT to connect the media devices in the living room to the rest of the network and we're getting about 40Mbps which should be fast enough. The wireless access points are no longer as centrally located as they were but coverage is still good.

Thanks again for the advice.

Bill