Is my plan for an RT-AC88U completly wrong?

[alternety]

I have a large area to feed. I am in a spot with no cell phone signal (all carriers). I have just purchased two Moto G4+ phones. My primary use will be to allow cell phones to use the WiFi from the selected router.

I am sort of down to either an RT-AC88U or an RT-AC3100. I am targeting these for beam forming and good overall RF coverage. The cell phones would be moving around the house and yard. My feeling is that the beam forming would help smooth out operation. And, I missed the $70 RT-AC3100s at Walmart.

I have two major concerns at this point.

1 - Will my cell phones actually be able to work with the probable routers. I started thinking about this and looked through cell assigned frequencies. It would appear that most of the assigned bands are outside the two frequency ranges used by the routers. And there may be only one band used by all major carriers.

If someone could tell me if this will work, I would sure appreciate it. Preferably with a bit of explanation about how it will work.

2 - Reliability of the RT-AC88U. When looking for things I frequently look around for user reviews as well as institutional reviews. Amazon is frequently the best source. Note; I don't pay much (if any) attention to the good ones. Mostly the bottom two ratings and sometimes the bottom three. I also read through them and apply an adjustment for those that clearly did not have any idea what they were doing. Like, I just installed the latest firmware (from 2 years ago) and my router still does not show a laser display on the ceiling.

They had 658 customer comments. Roughly 25% seemed to have real hardware problems. Some could be bad configuration or other things. There were a good number of commenters that did seem to know what they were talking about. I do understand; bad experiences cause more comments than good experiences so the relative percentages are not really useful. But there were 116+ people with failed routers.

Most of the bottom rating appeared to be significant hardware failures. Some very soon after putting the device into service; many later and after warranty.

Anyone have any insight into the actual reliability of these routers on a broad basis? Individual responses saying "mine works fine" are not helpful. I prefer to stay with Asus and Merlin; but?

 

[unclebuk]

I use the AC88U and everything I throw at it can connect. The wifi range seems adequate, 5GHz is weak though. All in all the router performs as it should, have had no hiccups with it. There may be better routers out there for your needs but you can do a lot worse than the AC88U.

For $70, I would have bought the Ac3100 (3 of them), only difference is the number of LAN ports...

 

[Wutikorn]

I have a large area to feed. I am in a spot with no cell phone signal (all carriers). I have just purchased two Moto G4+ phones. My primary use will be to allow cell phones to use the WiFi from the selected router.

I am sort of down to either an RT-AC88U or an RT-AC3100. I am targeting these for beam forming and good overall RF coverage. The cell phones would be moving around the house and yard. My feeling is that the beam forming would help smooth out operation. And, I missed the $70 RT-AC3100s at Walmart.

I have two major concerns at this point.

1 - Will my cell phones actually be able to work with the probable routers. I started thinking about this and looked through cell assigned frequencies. It would appear that most of the assigned bands are outside the two frequency ranges used by the routers. And there may be only one band used by all major carriers.

If someone could tell me if this will work, I would sure appreciate it. Preferably with a bit of explanation about how it will work.

2 - Reliability of the RT-AC88U. When looking for things I frequently look around for user reviews as well as institutional reviews. Amazon is frequently the best source. Note; I don't pay much (if any) attention to the good ones. Mostly the bottom two ratings and sometimes the bottom three. I also read through them and apply an adjustment for those that clearly did not have any idea what they were doing. Like, I just installed the latest firmware (from 2 years ago) and my router still does not show a laser display on the ceiling.

They had 658 customer comments. Roughly 25% seemed to have real hardware problems. Some could be bad configuration or other things. There were a good number of commenters that did seem to know what they were talking about. I do understand; bad experiences cause more comments than good experiences so the relative percentages are not really useful. But there were 116+ people with failed routers.

Most of the bottom rating appeared to be significant hardware failures. Some very soon after putting the device into service; many later and after warranty.

Anyone have any insight into the actual reliability of these routers on a broad basis? Individual responses saying "mine works fine" are not helpful. I prefer to stay with Asus and Merlin; but?

1. Have you actually check what frequencies are able to use? I have not heard about carriers using band of WiFi. Normally there should be frequencies that are still usable and phones support them.

2.Have you checked how old was the review? Asus, most of the time, release devices when firmware/software is not yet good enough leading to bad reviews at the release time. But since it does not seem like you need such a powerful router, AC68U may do the same job as the area covered is not that different. The main different between AC68U and AC88U would probably be "Smart connect" function. If you decide to get AC68U, be sure to ask for HW revision such as A1,A2,B1,C1 as each has different CPU speeds for example. AC1900P is also good for its CPU speed, equivalent to AC88U if I remember correctly, but the RAM amount of AC1900P is half of AC88U. But you don't need a lot of RAM if you are not using any USB apps in router.

Btw, how large is the area you need to cover? It might worth buying one router with one AP to cover the space.

 

[pete y testing]

1 - Will my cell phones actually be able to work with the probable routers. I started thinking about this and looked through cell assigned frequencies. It would appear that most of the assigned bands are outside the two frequency ranges used by the routers. And there may be only one band used by all major carriers.

not sure your asking the right question here as no wireless router will work with cell phone connectivity to the tower , the wireless router will however provide wifi to your cell phone so you can access data from your isp service

But there were 116+ people with failed routers.

there was some initial issues with the 88u but most of it is ironed out now and its a pretty good unit overall

many later and after warranty.

i doubt after warranty as the 88u is very new and all 88u are still in warranty period

have been running the 88u here for about 6 months without any major issues and with the fw now well mature i dont expect any new issues overall

 

[alternety]

On the page from Amazon, the comments span a range of dates; some are quite recent. Just do a search at Amazon to read them.

I described quite badly what I am trying to find for the phone and WiFi. I know cell phones can link to WiFi. What I am trying to figure out, and a simply stated question on my part would have been much simpler then what I did; Does the cell phone use 2.5 or 5.0, or both. It is range in a building that I care about. If the phone uses the lower frequency; better probable coverage through walls and stuff. That is really all. I was diving into band allocation looking for a common correlation to WiFi. Wrong question. Clearly the phones will deal directly on WiFi frequencies. Bad thinking. Not relevant. Sorry.

$70 RT-AC3100. Oddly, I would have bought 3 as well. I found some but there was no reasonable way to get to them. Particularly not knowing if they would be there when I got there. It involved several hours each way on a ferry, and a significant drive after the ferry; during a storm.

Size of target. Two story (upstairs primary living, downstairs assorted things and garages). Floor between up and down is reinforced concrete, water tubing, a few inches of foam, sub-floor, drywall. Sort of like a crude Faraday cage. Windows all have a metallic film. Outside radiation does not get in (or out) very well. Even at FM radio frequencies. I have to set my watch up against a window on the Colorado side occasionally so it can commune with Fort Collins to find out what time it really is. Total coverage area (with yard) around an acre.

House is hardwired Ethernet to pretty much everywhere. Some cable to the outside. I am anticipating at least two WiFi points in the house. Probably 2 -4 outside. I will not really know until I can get the new router and map fields from possible router placements. Right now I have a RT-N66U, but I believe it is compromised. It no longer allows me to talk to it. So I am going to set up a new router and then plot the results.

I need a WiFi connection to activate my phones. When I get that working, I am going to use a phone to map cell strengths from the various carriers at my site. Then make a final pick of a provider. The one I am going to try first supports transfers between cell and WiFi. So I have some experimenting to do to see how things actually work. It (Republic) is the best provider option I have found.

I really need to be able to make it a unified net so someone moving around with a phone can stay in contact with the network. Given the cell levels here, I don't think I will have problems with the phone going crazy trying to switch back and forth between cell and WiFi. I will find out.

Version of purchased device: I am going to try, but I am not sure a big retailer will pay attention. Would anyone happen to know what the latest version is for the 88U?