Thanks for advice SNB community- 1st time post

[Ken F]

Hello- First post but I've been lurking for a while. (Thanks everyone for knowledge/time/support!)
I'm overdue to replace my old Airport Extreme router. (it's not even the latest AC supported "tower" model). Need advice from this valued forum.
I just went through a painful and emotionally scarring ;-) ordeal with a couple ASUS TM 1900s and the hack that shall not be named... Not my best decision and the family won't let me forget it. Ha!
I need to cover a single story "L" shaped, 4 bdrm house. I need four LAN ports on main router. WAN from an Arris SB8200. Comcast is ISP. We only have the 250/10 plan. Currently, we are only ever supporting a max of six wireless devices with everyone home. One of the LAN hardwires goes to a GB switch that sends to a couple PCs and a Mac as I'm currently working from home.
I like the concept of the Asus AIMesh and having just spent some time dealing w/ their web browser, I'm OK with the features they offer... but not married to Asus. If Netgear or someone else is better system/value, I'm good with that.
Assuming Asus for the moment, the tri-band models seem to make sense for AIMesh since the 3rd channel can be used for the backhaul as it will be difficult (but not impossible) to run Cat6 cable to the extension locations. The AC5300 is expensive especially when you're looking at 2 or more. Any advice is sooo appreciated. Cheers- Ken

 

[thiggins]

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/wifi-system/view

AiMesh is still a work in progress. Works fine for some folks. Not so much for others.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Besides oldness, how well does your current Airport Extreme cover your house?

250mbps wifi is actually pretty difficult to get at any significant with any significant range or walls in the middle. however, you may not need that much speed on your wireless clients, in which case maybe it's just a question of how the coverage "feels" to people on their phones or whatever.

I guess what I'm saying is, maybe just a single router in the location where your current one is would be fine, rather than messing with APs or extensions. the two board favorites tend to be the ASUS R86U and the Netgear R7800 (I have the R7800 and like it).

 

[Ken F]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not expecting to get 250mbps over wifi. I'd be happy w/ 100 - 150mbps. It's about 50-60mbps right now w/ current hardware setup. I'm not even getting the 250mbps over the hard wire. Only about 140mbps down and 11mbps up. I know that the end of house furthest from the router is almost a dead zone. I probably will go w/ one of the two favorite choices and see what happens. Probably the Asus. Thanks again.

 

[degrub]

Do you have any RG6 running back to the dead area ?
If so, consider MOCA2 bridging pair of modems - Actiontec or Motorola and set up a MOCA2 network.