TP-Link C2600/C3150/AC5400 Or Linksys AC5400 or Asus RT-AC3100

[PhoenixV]

So here is the dilemma:

Current router is C2600 after disaster with Asus RT-68u and constant disconnects which has scared me away even though Asus seems to update most frequently.

Looking to upgrade to one of the others listed above. I can't find good reviews of the newer TP-Link units....

Can someone help out?

Thanks

 

[TonyH]

So here is the dilemma:

Current router is C2600 after disaster with Asus RT-68u and constant disconnects which has scared me away even though Asus seems to update most frequently.

Looking to upgrade to one of the others listed above. I can't find good reviews of the newer TP-Link units....

Can someone help out?

Thanks

RT-AC68u is a good router. I wonder what was the reason you had so much trouble. Regarding f/w update is upto you whether to update or not. There is no such thing as I gotta update because there is new release out. Now your C2600 reached it's limit? Do you have many -ac devices? What is your ISP provided speed? Do you live in WiFi congested area? What type of dwelling? How many users? Many things to consider including router.

 

[PhoenixV]

68u was just a nightmare. Required rebooting all the time. There are many of these same stories here. I have 100down and 30 up, on fiber. 12 ac devices, 2 2.4 devices. 2.4 is VERY congested, 5 ghz isn't that bad. Using 149 at 40 or 80 MHz.

 

[sfx2000]

Can someone help out?

Buy an Airport Extreme - not so fancy, but they work... and they're not Mac specific...

 

[TonyH]

68u was just a nightmare. Required rebooting all the time. There are many of these same stories here. I have 100down and 30 up, on fiber. 12 ac devices, 2 2.4 devices. 2.4 is VERY congested, 5 ghz isn't that bad. Using 149 at 40 or 80 MHz.

By any chance have you tracked running temperature of RT-68u?

 

[PhoenixV]

As far as the temp of the 86u goes I have given up. At one time I did but I will not spend anymore time in that rabbit hole. I don't have the time....

 

[PhoenixV]

SFX, I'm surprised at your suggestion. I've lurked here for a while and I was shocked at that suggestion. Yes, I do agree Airports just work, I've had several, but I find the range on the extreme to be lacking in comparison to other units - however they are very reliable.

 

[sfx2000]

SFX, I'm surprised at your suggestion. I've lurked here for a while and I was shocked at that suggestion. Yes, I do agree Airports just work, I've had several, but I find the range on the extreme to be lacking in comparison to other units - however they are very reliable.

Once you take routing out of the picture on Airports - they're very good as AP's - and reasonably priced...

I've got two on my LAN - range isn't an issue, as one cannot beat physics in any event - and most "range" issues are not the AP, but the client radios - I've not seen this as an issue to be honest.

Nice thing is they do very nice Guest WLAN support over a VLAN tag that one can put into a managed switch to segment out traffic there - when they're bridged (as Apple calls it), the LAN ports are all hot on the primary LAN, which is handy, and one can still extend out from the AP's to cover holes with an Airport Express perhaps.

They do an excellent job with multicast - honoring upstream groups, and they do some interesting things with 802.11 that many other vendors don't do that support inter-AP roaming - namely Neighbor Reports and AP Channel Reports.

Lot of folks bypass Airports - mainly out of a dislike for anything Apple - but with the Airports, these devices, esp. in AP mode, just work, and Apple wants WiFi to work, not just for their platforms, but for all platforms - rising tides lift all boats...

So with the stability and performance - they're not a bad deal - and better than many would suspect...

 

[L&LD]

sfx2000, this is certainly not my experience with AE, but those were used in router (not AP) mode.

If the chance presents itself, I will have a go at using them as AP's for a customer, but from what I remember; range, latency, throughput (wired and wireless) and how hot they ran made me give them away, no charge (and I felt bad about that too).

 

[sfx2000]

If the chance presents itself, I will have a go at using them as AP's for a customer, but from what I remember; range, latency, throughput (wired and wireless) and how hot they ran made me give them away, no charge (and I felt bad about that too).

Try one inside your LAN as an AP, not as a router... might be surprised

 

[L&LD]

Try one inside your LAN as an AP, not as a router... might be surprised

I will. You do have me curious about them now!

 

[sfx2000]

One other thing I forgot to mention about Airports - they fully support mDNS - which is probably Apple's greatest contribution ever to the small network community - and all major platforms these days support multi-cast DNS, from Windows 10 to Android to Linux (via Avahi) to Macs and iDevices...

(Bonjour Sleep Proxy is also pretty cool for Wake on LAN, Wireless Wake on LAN, and I haven't found any other vendor that does it as well or consistently as Apple does on that front) - on Windows, to get full mDNS support, install iTunes, which includes a better stack there than Win10, and also implements fully on WinXP thru Win8.1...

Bonjour sleep proxy - Apple TV also does this, so one doesn't need an Airport there, but still...

CUPS printer sharing - yep, Apple does it better than most - and pretty easy to add in AirPrint if needed with some external support - really do wish Apple would just put that in the Airports and be done with that...

 

[Harimau]

You can find a review of TP-Link C2600 here:
http://voyager8.blogspot.com/2016/07/my-tp-link-ac2600-wireless-dual-band.html

and to understand about the wireless-AC technology, one article next to the above is:
http://voyager8.blogspot.com/2016/07/understanding-wireless-ac-bandwidth-you.html

 

[TheManFromUncle]

One other thing I forgot to mention about Airports - they fully support mDNS - which is probably Apple's greatest contribution ever to the small network community - and all major platforms these days support multi-cast DNS, from Windows 10 to Android to Linux (via Avahi) to Macs and iDevices...

(Bonjour Sleep Proxy is also pretty cool for Wake on LAN, Wireless Wake on LAN, and I haven't found any other vendor that does it as well or consistently as Apple does on that front) - on Windows, to get full mDNS support, install iTunes, which includes a better stack there than Win10, and also implements fully on WinXP thru Win8.1...

Bonjour sleep proxy - Apple TV also does this, so one doesn't need an Airport there, but still...

CUPS printer sharing - yep, Apple does it better than most - and pretty easy to add in AirPrint if needed with some external support - really do wish Apple would just put that in the Airports and be done with that...

And lest one forgets... Very High Spousal Approval.

 

[PhoenixV]

All true and valid comments. I really like the Apple product, just disappointed that there have been no updates to the hardware in so long. I did find however that wireless printing and scanning was much slower on an Extreme (ac) than on an ASUS, LINKSYS, or TP-Link (ac) router.... That's really why I replaced the Extreme I had a year ago.

 

[ablatt]

sfx2000, one thing I now realize after playing around a bit with 5 GHz is that if your neighbour sets up his router that defaults to 80 MHz wide channels on 5GHz, he's going to overlap you on the higher channels (149 for example) regardless of what channel you pick up there.

For that reason, the FCC change in 2014 to allow equal power on the lower 5GHz channels (40 for example) is critical and I believe the existing Apple AE won't provide that. That is why, to me, the newer AC2600 and AC3150 routers have a distinct advantage over the prior AC1900 routers like the AE. Hopefully the new AE will have that when it comes out.