Best ac router for range?

pioneer2000

pioneer2000

pioneer2000

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Essex
D-Link DIR-880L £115ish

Asus ac68u

Asus ac87u

Linksys EA6900


Looking at some reviews that are doing the rounds, it looks like the DIR-880L actually beats the Asus ac68u in many instances and at about £30-40 cheaper?!

The only review of the ac87u that I've seen seems to suggest that it's cureently slower than the ac68u (presumably a firmware issue?)

I'd quite have liked an Adsl modem router but seeing as the DSL-ac68u is so expensive and apparently the integrated modem interferes with the wifi kinda puts me off.

Any other suggestions? Also does the DIR-880 come in black? Pictures online seem to suggest so but can't find it anywhere!
 
I'd go for the RT-AC68U out of that list - there's been a number of firmware releases for it and it's now pretty stable compared to the RT-AC87U which is only recently available in the UK and been released in the US for a couple of months.

Also the ASUS devices has Merlin firmware which adds a few features and resolves some of the bugs in the original ASUS firmware. I'm currently running Merlin 376.45 build with no issues.

The one you didn't list is the Netgear R7000 - I've found, in my setup, the wifi range to be a little better on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz but I hate the stock firmware. Interface is easy enough to use, but whenever you change a setting the router reboots whereas making most changes on the ASUS will not reboot the router and the ASUS firmware has more features as standard.
 
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I got the AC68U yesterday too and have the .47 Merlin firmware installed. Everything seems to be working as expected and wireless speeds are great.

My phone picks up the 5GHz signal from the driveway at 233Mbps... Indoors downstairs it's 433 while upstairs it's around the 240 mark.
 
Ordered the AC68U, should arrive saturday.
reused my old dlink DIR-655 when i upgraded to fibre but don't think it can handle the number and speed of modern wifi devices.
 
The 87U is too new and full of bugs in the firmware.

As for the DSL models - just no. Each time I've tried to use it, DLM has kicked in and enabled interleaving on my FTTC line. The routing part is fine, but the modem seems to suck. Yes, I have a few routers kicking around the house.
 
Evil Shubunkin said:
The 87U is too new and full of bugs in the firmware.

As for the DSL models - just no. Each time I've tried to use it, DLM has kicked in and enabled interleaving on my FTTC line. The routing part is fine, but the modem seems to suck. Yes, I have a few routers kicking around the house.
Click to expand...

lol, how comes you have so many new routers about?
 
pioneer2000 said:
lol, how comes you have so many new routers about?
Click to expand...

Initially, fancied a change from ASUS and the R7000 was a reasonable price, plus it will allow me to play about to DD-WRT when I have some spare time. The DSL was bought so I could have a single box solution instead of the separate VDSL modem - that didn't work out so well.

Don't have the 87U - has it even been released in the UK yet? Not that I'm going to buy it, have enough sitting around by the time you add in the BT HH3 and HH5.
 
So after some more research it's sounding like the more expensive 3x3 and 4x4 routers are pretty pointless if using iphones / ipads primarily (as they are only single stream devices)?

All I want to do is get the best possible range router as my current netgear dgnd3300 (?) struggles to pass a significant signal out of the room it is in!
 
The AC68U has great range, the 5GHz signal covers my entire house and reaches out across the street of my house. The 2.4GHz signal actually reaches half way down my street.
 
Linksys EA6900. £117

Dlink DIR-880L. £128

Asus ac68u. £150

I really cannot see why the asus I championed here when it's reviewed as being worse performing than the dlink and is more expensive than both by quite a margin.
 
Add the Netgear R7000 to that list. The R7000 tops the AC1900 charts, but never gets mentioned here and there are few people running it :confused:

Perhaps people want custom firmware to tweak and provide features not available by default (and to be fair Merlin FW is excellent at offering this), but I'd rather better hardware with limited 3rd party firmware as long as it provides a solid basis. Then again, I don't use VPN or any of the more advanced stuff :o:p

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/view

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/rankers/router/result/1234-netgear-r7000-nighthawk
 
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Bear in mind with the R7000 if you do want custom firmware then Kong's DD-WRT is available for it, and is easy to install (and remove if you want to go back to Netgear firmware). So, possibly best of both worlds.

I think most people would tend avoid Linksys products these days, especially now that Belkin bought them from Cisco - the EA6900 isn't meant to be that great and the WRT1900AC isn't living up to expectations and doesn't look like it's going to be possible to implement DD-WRT due to some driver issue, whether closed source or just incompatible.

I cannot fault the RT-AC68U (unlike the DSL version) - it will stay up for weeks on end and the only time the PPP session drops is if BT are doing something (DLM intervention/removal), Exchange work etc.
 
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