Replacing Asus RT-N66U

[enr00ted]

Hi everyone,

I have some questions for you. I'm a long time Asus user of network equipment. My first expensive router was a Linksys when tomato/ddwrt firmwares were "The Thing" the time I was living ina house with no interfering neighbour wifi's. Then I had the bad luck that a thunder storm fried most of my equipment, router, modem, xbox etc. So I had to replace, and based on the reviews this RT-N66U was presented like the "Next Thing". It allowed installing this firmwares, it even had a modified stock (aka Merlin) so pretty cool. It was even cooler to thinker with optware/entware, but all in all it's been a dissapointing experience. They screwed the drivers big time, and I have the feeling that they lowered it's initial capabilities.

Then I moved to an apartment. Initially there were no neighbours as It is a new building but now things are different. The 2.4Ghz band is uselss no matter what I do (ppl don't give a "sheet" on their configurations, and use cheap ISP equipment). I've spend loads of money buying the RP-N53 repeaters and adding more and more equipment. Useless. I am now trying to move to the 5Ghz spectrum. I can't afford buying only high-end computers, smartphones etc to have only 5Ghz enabled devices, so I still have to use the 2.4Ghz band. I recently upgraded my laptops wifi card to ac enabled adapters.

There is another issue here in Spain, where I live now. It is very diffucult to get Asus network equipment. They only sell online, and mostly super high-end routers. No switches, no aftermarket antennas, barelly some adapters, nothing. I don't like ebay, and I can't afford bying overseas. Amazon Spain is pretty useless too, it does not compare with it's Us/Eu counterparts. The market is flooded with Linksys or Tp-Link equipment. The same goes for wifi adaptors for laptops and generally good equipment.

So unless I move to another country, very unlikely, I won't care that much and I won't spend that much money again. I have the worst connection so I can't use any Ai stuff, vpn, or cloud features that Asus provides. Now after this biography comes the question:

What budget replacement are for the Asus RT-N66U with AC tech? Will I lose functionality ? I see TP-Link gear is very simple, trying their emulators, you basically have no advance settings for anything, seems like everything is capped. I am interested in gigabit lan and as much coverage as possible as I have a "Sausage" type of apartment and I can't place my router in the middle.

Thank you for your patience in reading this

 

[L&LD]

I must have missed why you don't use the 5GHz band of the RT-N66U you have?

The cheapest upgrade to AC will be to go with the RT-AC56U. On sale, it goes to $100 or lower.

 

[enr00ted]

I must have missed why you don't use the 5GHz band of the RT-N66U you have?

The cheapest upgrade to AC will be to go with the RT-AC56U. On sale, it goes to $100 or lower.

I am but I want the higher speeds that AC might provide. Besides, my Intel 3160 can only achieve 150 MB link speed on N and 433 on AC. I am not sure if my laptop is able to use a 2x2 wifi card like the 7260 (it initially shipped with a single band broadcom card with bluetooth).

I am thinking of giving up Asus as it is not a budget brand. So the question was more like what are the tradeoffs in relation to other manufacturers like TP-Link and co. as I don't need any of the fancy cloud and features that asus provides and I have never used. I want a router to do it's job and provide good tranfer speeds.

To put an example why would I buy the RT-AC56U instead a TP-Link from the archer (ac750 c2) series or something else I don't know. I mean what am I really going to lose ? (Apart from merlin support )