RJM
New Around Here
I just upgraded my network and thought I'd share my experience.
I had an RT-N66U running the latest Merlin firmware and many clients with the important one being my desktop computer which has an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard which communicated with the router using its on-board 5GHz wireless-N.
The network was reliable however I transfer a lot of large files from my desktop to a server which is connected to the router via wired Ethernet. I have never been happy with the 16 MB/s file transfer speed this setup achieved. I fiddled with antenna placement, settings, and firmware versions but was unable to speed it up.
I chose the PCE-AC68 adapter because I saw many positive comments about it here. Installation was simple and I had no problem using the latest driver with Windows 10.
I chose the RT-AC68U rather than the RT-AC87 or RT-AC3200 after reading many excellent comments here explaining that I would not benefit from the higher end models due to lack of client support for the new technologies. I was also concerned about 5GHz reliability of the RT-AC87U and saw no consensus here that the problems would ever be fixed with driver updates.
My file transfer speed using the PCE-AC68 talking to the existing RT-N66U increased by 50% to about 26 MB/s.
Replacing the RT-N66U with the RT-AC68U further doubled the file transfer speed to about 47 MB/s.
I did some tests comparing file transfer performance using the default Asus firmware, the latest Asus firmware, and the latest Merlin firmware. All performed about the same.
I'm happy with the final result. Thanks to all the contributors here who helped guide my decisions.
I had an RT-N66U running the latest Merlin firmware and many clients with the important one being my desktop computer which has an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard which communicated with the router using its on-board 5GHz wireless-N.
The network was reliable however I transfer a lot of large files from my desktop to a server which is connected to the router via wired Ethernet. I have never been happy with the 16 MB/s file transfer speed this setup achieved. I fiddled with antenna placement, settings, and firmware versions but was unable to speed it up.
I chose the PCE-AC68 adapter because I saw many positive comments about it here. Installation was simple and I had no problem using the latest driver with Windows 10.
I chose the RT-AC68U rather than the RT-AC87 or RT-AC3200 after reading many excellent comments here explaining that I would not benefit from the higher end models due to lack of client support for the new technologies. I was also concerned about 5GHz reliability of the RT-AC87U and saw no consensus here that the problems would ever be fixed with driver updates.
My file transfer speed using the PCE-AC68 talking to the existing RT-N66U increased by 50% to about 26 MB/s.
Replacing the RT-N66U with the RT-AC68U further doubled the file transfer speed to about 47 MB/s.
I did some tests comparing file transfer performance using the default Asus firmware, the latest Asus firmware, and the latest Merlin firmware. All performed about the same.
I'm happy with the final result. Thanks to all the contributors here who helped guide my decisions.
