Yes, the Asus RT-AC68U (without the DSL) is expensive , but well worth it!! My work have been using this for 6 months, and it has great range, as well as login over web (no fiddling with cat 5's to change a setting!), and many good features...


As for the new netgear, well it may be worthwhile to wait for the reviews...

Edited by comnut1 (Sun 17-Jan-16 12:35:26)

I am more than happy with my Asus DSL-AC68U which is both a modem and a router.

As a modem the modem part of the router, (for me), works really well with my BT Infinity connection with no dropouts at all.

Also, the wireless performance of this Asus router seems quite good and it is much better than the BT Homehub 5 that I keep as a spare.

A potential downside is that Asus do sometimes offer quite a lot of software updates in quick succession but I tend to wait at least 10 days before installing software updates or making router changes which generally appears to keep the BT line management software happy.

Fido

Beamforming is basic GCSE physics, adjusting the phase of 2 signals to adjust the interference pattern to produce a peak signal at the required location in the wave pattern. Outdoors this works brilliantly, predictably and significantly extends range without increasing transmission power. in a house many with signal blocking walls it may be harder to achieve.

In fact it's so simple, it a why didn't they do this sooner kind of thing.

My advice would be to get a RT-AC68U when it's on offer and use a separate modem ( this leave room for future broadband upgrades while being able to use the same router ), or keep your existing setup and buy and slightly modify the settings of somthing like cheep BT home hub 5 off e-bay to use as a AC wireless access point.

The latter is the cheapest way to get an wireless 802.1AC access point. regardless if your lucky enough to be able to get an upgrade, right now nothing short of a moderately fast PC acting as a router can realistically handle over 300mbps internet with full firewall protection and even the very latest routers cannot handle a full duplex gigabit connection and give full speeds even with cut through NAT which bypasses much of the firewall capabilities of a router.

Edited by Ragnarok (Wed 16-Mar-16 10:28:16)

I suspect that if you ask 10 people you'll get 10 different answers. I have an ASUS AC66U, with HG612 modem. For various reasons, it is upstairs, similar to what you are proposing(?). My experience is that you can forget 5GHz reception unless you are standing in the same room. 2.4GHz is very similar to every other router I've ever had (it's predecessor was a Billion 7800N) meaning that it's fine throughout the house for something with a big aerial, say a laptop, but a phone or tablet, with a much smaller aerial (I assume) will struggle. Consequently I have a Devolo thing sat in the corner of the downstairs living room connected over the mains. I hate the damn thing and would really like to take up floorboards, channel into the plaster etc but.... management says no

So I'd suggest that you buy a cheapish n device for upstairs and put an AP in downstairs. You can get some very discreet ones which you just might get past the management. After all, she uses wifi too.

John

Edited by JHo1 (Wed 16-Mar-16 10:46:35)

I have this:

http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-9_Arc...

It's 'supported' by the latest releases of OpenWRT and Gargoyle, both very powerful firmwares with serious QOS capability.