Anyone got a AC WiFi Network set up?

Amp34 · 14 Sep 2014 at 13:03

I'm in a rented house and the power lines just aren't cutting it (5MB/s throughput) so I'm thinking about wireless AC. What systems do people have set up and what results do you get?

I have a Synology Nas set up upstairs, along with a desktop (in a different room), both about 10-15 ft from the router point downstairs. I've also got various laptops and phones. The NAS holds RAW camera files (about 30MB a piece) and is used as a backup for photo editing on the desktop and laptops.

At the moment I'm thinking of getting a D-Link Wireless AC1900 and pairing it with a Asus PCE-AC68 Network card on the desktop. Reviews suggest this will give real world throughput of 50-90MB/s.

I'm struggling on what to connect to the NAS however. It's supposed to be picky with USB dongles and I understand they aren't particularly fast. Another option I'm considering is a range extender, connecting that to the NAS via ethernet and pairing it with the AC1900. I have no idea what one though and whether it would work like that...

Any input appreciated.

Ryan-3 · 14 Sep 2014 at 17:42

My network is very simple, but my 5th gen Time Capsule does the wireless network and i've found the range to be good - reaches almost ~15m from the house - with speeds in poor reception areas that are more than useable.

Definitely would recommend it for file transfers though. My PC is upstairs to it and is usually 4/5 bars on Win8.1. Connects at 450Mbps and the MBA at its full .ac speed.

Amp34 · 14 Sep 2014 at 17:55

What real world transfer speeds are you getting? I.e. when transferring something like a film from the desktop to the MBA in MB/s.

Ryan-3 · 15 Sep 2014 at 11:29

13-14MB/s when moving files of music from desktop to Time Capsule. I think it was about ~20MB/s with a single large file. Never checked the speeds on Mac, but they appear faster than the desktop.

xGBHxPegasus · 15 Sep 2014 at 16:35

Amp34 said:
At the moment I'm thinking of getting a D-Link Wireless AC1900 and pairing it with a Asus PCE-AC68 Network card on the desktop. Reviews suggest this will give real world throughput of 50-90MB/s.

Any input appreciated.

I brought one of the DIR-880L's before I went on holiday, quite a nice bit of kit but I would say wait a few months as its newly out and has a few bugs in it that they are currently fixing.

One of the bugs was that the DHCP would cut out if you started assigning Reserved IP's and you would have to factory reset to get it working again (tho the support was fantastic and they sent me beta firmware which solved the issue and its been working fine since)