Looking for WiFi 6 adapter to connect Windows Desktop to Xfinity XB7

[unmesh]

My son just moved to a location where his desktop is now in a different room than his Xfinity XB7 Gateway and he can no longer connect the two over an Ethernet cable. There is one intervening internal wall between the two.

It would appear that there are three wireless choices:

• USB AX adapter (Is D-Link the only one?)
• PCIe AX adapter (detachable antenna allows for better placement?)
• AX WiFi router in wireless bridge mode

Any recommendations amongst these?

Thanks

 

[L&LD]

AC or AX router in Media Bridge mode (by far).

Doesn't need to be expensive, an old RT-AC56U running @john9527's firmware does a great job, for example.

Release - [Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374 LTS release 51E3 | SmallNetBuilder Forums (snbforums.com)

 

[unmesh]

Thanks!

 

[unmesh]

Tried it with an Asus RT-AC68U and the network connection drops after a few hours. The Xfinity gateway indicates it is connected which suggests it is something on the wired side rather than the wireless one.

I'm going to add an Intel NIC just in case there is an issue with the motherboard's integrated Realtek Ethernet controller.

 

[unmesh]

Changing the NIC didn't help.

 

[eibgrad]

Have you considered other bridging options besides wireless, like powerline? It probably won't give you nearly the same throughput, but will likely be far more reliable (assuming powerline works at all). Or perhaps MoCA.

Just seems to me that too many ppl try to *force* wireless to solve every problem. And when it comes to wireless bridging, the lack of reliability is sometimes a problem due to how it's typically implemented. You have to be a bit "lucky" to get a truly reliable wireless connection w/ wireless bridging.

FWIW, I use powerline for my smart TVs, and they work great. Granted, they can only deliver about 75Mbps (shared), but that's more than enough for streaming even high-resolution content. And I don't have to congest my wireless network w/ all that data either. Leave wireless for situations where you have no other option (e.g., a smartphone). As I said, you may lose some throughput, but I'd rather do that than have an unreliable connection.

If you insist on the wireless bridge, it might be better to install Merlin on the RT-AC68U and use a watchdog script to continuously ping across the bridge, and reboot if the connection stops working (the fact it registers as connected on the AP side doesn't necessarily mean it's working).

FWIW, I happen to have an ASUS RT-AC68U as well, and I'm currently using FreshTomato configured as a wireless ethernet bridge over 5GHz for the benefit of my desktop, and it's rock solid. So you might want to consider that option as well (at least if you insist on wireless). The only thing that doesn't work is multicast mDNS. But it's not important for my needs anyway. That's another benefit of powerline/MoCA; you're less likely to have multicast issues.

 

[unmesh]

I hear you and the long term plan is to hire someone to run Ethernet cables to all the rooms.

I bought an AX200 based PCIe card in the interim but will try FreshTomato (which version?) and will rummage through my closets to see if I can find my pair of Powerline adapters to try out.

 

[eibgrad]

I'm running FT 2021.5 at the moment, specifically the following firmware for my RT-AC68U.

http://freshtomato.org/downloads/freshtomato-arm/2021/2021.5/K26ARM/freshtomato-RT-AC68U-ARM_NG-2021.5-AIO-64K.zip

 

[unmesh]

I borrowed another AC-RT68U. Is it safe to go from 2020.2 to 2021.5 without a NVRAM reset or would I be tempting fate by doing so?

Thanks

 

[eibgrad]

That's your call. FWIW, I *never* recommend "dirty" upgrades. Whether it's FT, Merlin, or DD-WRT, it's always my recommendation you reset to factory defaults (erase nvram thoroughly), do the upgrade, and reset to factory defaults again *after* the upgrade for good measure. Then manually apply your changes. Because if you don't, and anything goes wrong, you'll constantly be questioning the dirty upgrade, and will end up doing a clean install eventually anyway.

 

[unmesh]

Will do a clean install!

 

[unmesh]

Just wanted to let the posters know that my son finally bit the bullet and had Ethernet run to every room so that everything with an Ethernet port is wired up!