Wifi router specs affecting congestion

[SubGothius]

I've got a duplex where I rent out the other half, and I'm thinking of sharing a gigabit fiber uplink with my tenants via wifi as an included amenity. The floorplans are mirror-images with 930 sq. ft. and 2BR on each side, and I'd be placing the wifi router as near as practical to the middle of the common dividing wall on my side.

Since I don't know what usage patterns my tenants might have, I'm most concerned about overall usability, such as mitigating potential congestion along with adequate speed for typical modern uses, rather than maximizing absolute speed for any single or limited number of client devices; my own usage is pretty minimal, just one lappy, occasional streaming, no gaming.

I'm familiar with and really like using Asus routers with FreshTomato firmware, and while an AX3000 or AC5300 router might be ideal, I wonder whether that might be overkill for my use-case if an older, cheaper model might do the actual job about as well.

Here's a few other WiFi 5 Asus router options I'm considering; which would be your pick for this use-case? Also open to other suggestions.

Router	CPU GHz	RAM	Bands	MIMO	WiFi 5
RT-AC3100/-AC88U	1.4 x2	512	Dual	4x4	AC3100
RT-AC3200	1.0 x2	256	Tri	3x3	AC3200
RT-AC1900P	1.4 x2	256	Dual	3x3	AC1900

Or would none of the boons bolded in that chart really matter much for me, if a 1.0 GHz dual-core, 256 MB, dual-band, 3x3 MIMO, AC1900 or AC1750 unit would meet my needs about as well?

 

[tgl]

I think you need to think about this plan in terms of "what could go wrong?". Some bad days you could wake up to:

• Some random hacker manages to break into your tenant's laptop and cleans out their bank account. Tenant sues you for not providing adequate firewall protection. (Hardly matters if that's true or not, you'll still be out big bucks for lawyers.)
• Tenant spies on your internet traffic (not exactly hard in this setup) and cleans out your bank account.
• Tenant decides to run an illegal file sharing server. It's you that gets hit with the DMCA takedown notices.
• Tenant puts child porn on that server. Now you are really in trouble.

In the days of landlines it was very thoroughly established that tenants should have their own independent phone lines. That lesson applies just as much to internet connections. If you want to be a friendly landlord you could get your ISP to run a separate fiber connection to the tenant premises, but I would not go further than that.

 

[Tech9]

Since I don't know what usage patterns my tenants might have

You understand as the owner of the account you are responsible for all their activities online, correct? Congestion is not an issue, but authorities knocking on your door because of your tenants may be potentially an issue. About the routers - they can run FreshTomato, but all are old models with no manufacturer support on End-Of-Life list.

 

[SubGothius]

To clarify, I'd be setting up my and tenants' access on different VLANs, each assigned to their own separate LAN subnets and SSIDs, which I've done before to set up guest wifi on my current Asus router I'd be upgrading from, so I'm no stranger to that procedure. There's a lot of apt. complexes around here offering free on-site community wifi that don't even seem to do that.

I'm not real concerned about these older models being EOL'd since I'd be running my own firmware that's still actively maintained, so I'm not dependent on the mfr. no longer offering firmware updates, and if the unit dies I can just get a replacement pretty quick and cheap.

Part of the appeal here is that I could write off half the cost of my gig fiber service as a business expense.

 

[tgl]

To clarify, I'd be setting up my and tenants' access on different VLANs

That would prevent exactly one of the four trouble scenarios I listed. Your ISP, or the legal authorities, will still not perceive any difference between you and your tenant. Not only is that bad for you, but any remotely tech-savvy tenant will politely decline this setup, because they will/should have most of these same fears about you.

Get the separate ISP feed already.

 

[coxhaus]

I agree with the above about it being a bad idea. If you still want to do it then you need to keep them out of your network. ASUS would not be the tool. A switch probably, a layer 3 switch to isolate their network completely and feed their router. To set this up you need to be network savvy.