few day 1 impressions...coming from a ac68
have a 3000sq ft single story house that's more of a stretched elongated rectangle then a square, router resides on one extreme end, so yeah, its always been a struggle to get a connection to the far end, its always taken repeaters, etc...
using it with the triple connect(forget what it is actually called, auto band switching) feature on
As I have seen merlin post before, new routers aren't going to improve range much, this is the case here as well...its a bit better then what my ac68u was doing but I also think most of this is from new router smell as in, newer routers perform great when you first use them but performance degrades over time. The performance I am getting today I do remember seeing from my ac68u when it was new as well. throughput felt and seemed higher, especially at close distances to the router. From my memory, I never saw the numbers I got today when the ac68u was new, nothing mind blowing but as an example, I may hit 80-90 mbps on a iPhone 6s on the 68u with speedtest app, was getting 120-130mbps on the ac3200. As far as I can tell, while range is roughly the same compared to a new 68u(its a theme I can't help but reiterate, in all the routers I had, a router on day 1 wasn't the same device 8-10months down the line), it's eliminated a deadspot or two along the way. Yes, while not fast enuf to stream 1080p, I can now check twitter from a previously deadspot bathroom
I played around a bit with using various repeaters I had, setting 68u in repeater mode etc and came across a lot of the same issues everyone has with repeaters and things like that, conflicts, uneven performance, lack of consistency and so on so for time being as I assess this device for me, I am not going to use repeaters and see how this goes over the next day or two. 68u is going into bridge mode for time being, it worked great as a repeater at first but I found myself in a confusing zone in my master bedroom on the phone as at times the connection was great, at other times it sunk badly as it would get confused as to which device to latch on to. Played around with the repeater being the same ssid, tried it with different ssid and there were things I didn't like about that setup either. the bulk of this is common to every router out there. only bring it up to point out, no the ac3200 is not the holy grail of routers.
Physically, Routers get warm to hot, this one is no different, the top faceplate is warm to the touch. Playing with the antenna orientation definitely is a factor on throughput at long range. with 6 antennas, asthetically it looks fairly silly, not sure any of care though. Its fairly big footprint wise.
I would say when all was said and done, I probably had well over 35+ devices that would connect to the router so when the concurrent device number rises, I can feel the load on the network, hence why I wanted to give this particular one a go. Family of 4, everyone has a phone and a tablet, few laptops, dropcam, desktop, 5-6 consoles, connected tvs, synology nas, a few apple tvs, firestick, various handheld gaming devices, airplay speakers, and so on. Its quite a load. If performance wise I get similar performance to the 68u (which at this point I think over time, I will) yet it handles better when under load and assault from the multitude of devices, it will probably be a keeper for that fact alone. I also like the fact that I have a 68u that's now going to become one heck of a repeater or bridge. If eventually merlin has a go at this with his fw releases, i'll be even more sold about the choice.
Lets see where this goes, but it's not a day 1 return for me unlike what I did with a few Linksys and netgear high end models I have tried over the years. at the same time, not throwing away the box and receipt either. You can lose hours playing around with these things and get so little accomplished, only the test of time will expose issues here.
have a 3000sq ft single story house that's more of a stretched elongated rectangle then a square, router resides on one extreme end, so yeah, its always been a struggle to get a connection to the far end, its always taken repeaters, etc...
using it with the triple connect(forget what it is actually called, auto band switching) feature on
As I have seen merlin post before, new routers aren't going to improve range much, this is the case here as well...its a bit better then what my ac68u was doing but I also think most of this is from new router smell as in, newer routers perform great when you first use them but performance degrades over time. The performance I am getting today I do remember seeing from my ac68u when it was new as well. throughput felt and seemed higher, especially at close distances to the router. From my memory, I never saw the numbers I got today when the ac68u was new, nothing mind blowing but as an example, I may hit 80-90 mbps on a iPhone 6s on the 68u with speedtest app, was getting 120-130mbps on the ac3200. As far as I can tell, while range is roughly the same compared to a new 68u(its a theme I can't help but reiterate, in all the routers I had, a router on day 1 wasn't the same device 8-10months down the line), it's eliminated a deadspot or two along the way. Yes, while not fast enuf to stream 1080p, I can now check twitter from a previously deadspot bathroom
I played around a bit with using various repeaters I had, setting 68u in repeater mode etc and came across a lot of the same issues everyone has with repeaters and things like that, conflicts, uneven performance, lack of consistency and so on so for time being as I assess this device for me, I am not going to use repeaters and see how this goes over the next day or two. 68u is going into bridge mode for time being, it worked great as a repeater at first but I found myself in a confusing zone in my master bedroom on the phone as at times the connection was great, at other times it sunk badly as it would get confused as to which device to latch on to. Played around with the repeater being the same ssid, tried it with different ssid and there were things I didn't like about that setup either. the bulk of this is common to every router out there. only bring it up to point out, no the ac3200 is not the holy grail of routers.
Physically, Routers get warm to hot, this one is no different, the top faceplate is warm to the touch. Playing with the antenna orientation definitely is a factor on throughput at long range. with 6 antennas, asthetically it looks fairly silly, not sure any of care though. Its fairly big footprint wise.
I would say when all was said and done, I probably had well over 35+ devices that would connect to the router so when the concurrent device number rises, I can feel the load on the network, hence why I wanted to give this particular one a go. Family of 4, everyone has a phone and a tablet, few laptops, dropcam, desktop, 5-6 consoles, connected tvs, synology nas, a few apple tvs, firestick, various handheld gaming devices, airplay speakers, and so on. Its quite a load. If performance wise I get similar performance to the 68u (which at this point I think over time, I will) yet it handles better when under load and assault from the multitude of devices, it will probably be a keeper for that fact alone. I also like the fact that I have a 68u that's now going to become one heck of a repeater or bridge. If eventually merlin has a go at this with his fw releases, i'll be even more sold about the choice.
Lets see where this goes, but it's not a day 1 return for me unlike what I did with a few Linksys and netgear high end models I have tried over the years. at the same time, not throwing away the box and receipt either. You can lose hours playing around with these things and get so little accomplished, only the test of time will expose issues here.
