preacher65
Regular Contributor
Have been holding off replacing my router as I wanted to build an AIMesh system, but can't see any realistic options in this house for a wired backhaul, so a tri-band router to support wireless backhaul seemed the way to go. However I'm so used to having an Asus router running Merlin that I think I'd regret anything else, and until recently there were only dual-band routers with Merlin support.
I've seen recently that Merlin is now available for the GT-AX1100, so was considering that as the main router, but it's so big! It's a typical UK house, with the VDSL line coming into the entrance hall - my AC86U just about fits on a small shelf, but there's no way I'd fit a ROG router on there, and even if I could, I'd probably be slaughtered if I proposed putting such an ugly thing where it would greet everyone who comes to visit.
The obvious answer seems to be to move the router somewhere else, leaving just the modem in the hall. With concrete floors on the ground floor, running ethernet around the house doesn't really seem practical. All I can think of is to connect the modem to the router over Powerline, but that seems like it's likely to result in a degraded internet experience.
I can experiment with my existing equipment (I have some Devolo Magic 2 Powerline kit already) but wondered if anyone has any experience of connecting a router to a modem over Powerline? Is it likely to be as bad as an idea as it seems?
Is there some other option I'm missing here - if I use dual-band kit for the mesh, is Powerline viable backhaul? Seems like that would introduce latency and throttle the bandwidth between the nodes.
A short note on use cases -
Internet - my broadband only delivers around 35-40Mbps. I don't do a lot of online gaming, but like many others now I work from home and rely heavily a solid VPN connection, with various internet breakouts for services such as Teams and 365. So internet bandwidth is unlikely to be capped by Powerline, but I don't want to introduce a lot of latency into every device's connection to the internet.
Home network - a few PCs/laptops, several mobile devices, some IoT, a Plex media server and a NAS. We're not chucking vast amounts of data around, but it'd be nice to realise decent bandwidth from clients to the NAS. I only have a few Wifi 6 clients so far, but doubtless more to come, and the NAS would probably be connected by ethernet to a mesh node if I go that route.
I've seen recently that Merlin is now available for the GT-AX1100, so was considering that as the main router, but it's so big! It's a typical UK house, with the VDSL line coming into the entrance hall - my AC86U just about fits on a small shelf, but there's no way I'd fit a ROG router on there, and even if I could, I'd probably be slaughtered if I proposed putting such an ugly thing where it would greet everyone who comes to visit.
The obvious answer seems to be to move the router somewhere else, leaving just the modem in the hall. With concrete floors on the ground floor, running ethernet around the house doesn't really seem practical. All I can think of is to connect the modem to the router over Powerline, but that seems like it's likely to result in a degraded internet experience.
I can experiment with my existing equipment (I have some Devolo Magic 2 Powerline kit already) but wondered if anyone has any experience of connecting a router to a modem over Powerline? Is it likely to be as bad as an idea as it seems?
Is there some other option I'm missing here - if I use dual-band kit for the mesh, is Powerline viable backhaul? Seems like that would introduce latency and throttle the bandwidth between the nodes.
A short note on use cases -
Internet - my broadband only delivers around 35-40Mbps. I don't do a lot of online gaming, but like many others now I work from home and rely heavily a solid VPN connection, with various internet breakouts for services such as Teams and 365. So internet bandwidth is unlikely to be capped by Powerline, but I don't want to introduce a lot of latency into every device's connection to the internet.
Home network - a few PCs/laptops, several mobile devices, some IoT, a Plex media server and a NAS. We're not chucking vast amounts of data around, but it'd be nice to realise decent bandwidth from clients to the NAS. I only have a few Wifi 6 clients so far, but doubtless more to come, and the NAS would probably be connected by ethernet to a mesh node if I go that route.