Miguel Stanic
Occasional Visitor
It only has more antennas because it has more radios to broadcast. They do not have any impact on coverage, it's still limited to 4 antennas per radio, and a client can only connect to one radio.
The RT-AC86U has 1 internal and 3 external, that's not a big difference.
Overlap will decrease performance rather than increase it, due to interference.
Personally I would go for an RT-AC68U or RT-AC66U_B1 for the extra APs, since you most likely don't need four streams (very few do), and you definitely won't need the extra CPU power while operating as APs or nodes.
Test with just one GT-AC5300 in the basement and an RT-AC68U in the middle floor - you will see how it works out. I've been able to cover two floors with lowly RT-N12 in the past for some customers, it will depend on your physical layout.
Great, thanks for the response. Any idea how the backhaul works in general or in my scenario if the main floor AC86u is wired (LAN switch to WAN port). And, the other 5300 is a wireless node on the top floor. I set both nodes to preferred Ethernet instead of the Auto they were defaulting to. But, what does this mean for my wireless 5300 node upstairs when it's a wireless node to begin with. Am I better to switch the nodes around so the 5300 node goes into the wired position on the main floor and vice versa with the AC86u going upstairs and connecting wireless as a node? And, if I try just one node to avoid any overlapping (if any) I would probably use the 5300 on main floor as the only wired node.