Worth investing in an AC router yet?

lamboman

lamboman

lamboman

Soldato
Joined
7 Apr 2008
Posts
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Hi all,

I have a pretty crappy Internet connection, 2.3/0.6Mbps DL/UL. When streaming 360p video and gaming or even just browsing at the same time, the video eats up all of the download bandwidth, so I desperately need something with QoS. Moving to FTTC at the end of the year, but desperately need something to sort the problems out now and perform well when I finally switch.

I only have one AC device in the house (my MBA), and certainly don't need the speed that AC offers. However, buying a top-end AC model now means that I won't need to upgrade to an AC model in the future. No matter what, 5GHz performance is priority.

Essentially, I know exactly what I'm looking for, however I really want a second opinion on which route to take.

So my question, which of these three options should I pick?
  1. N66U (£100) - Top of the 802.11n heap. Offers everything I need right now, and is rock solid stable. Dirt cheap compared to the other two, however will it be powerful enough to handle QoS at higher speeds if I require it (keep in mind upload only, so roughly 20Mbps up)? Gut feeling tells me it should handle that with ease and that I'm being stupid. Doesn't really need to handle anything else like VPN, got a Mac mini handling that.
  2. AC66U (£150) - essentially the same as the N66U but with AC capability. Same potential drawbacks with QoS. Not great value compared to the AC68U, but again, extremely stable.
  3. AC68U (£170) - most powerful model, however there are instabilities with the firmware at the moment. Also, in the coming years as improved AC devices appear, it may prove to be a bad value purchase.

Will only be looking at Asus routers. Merlin firmware appears to be excellent, support for the Asus routers is in a different league to anything else, and in terms of performance they're either trading blows or are the very best at their respective price ranges.

Wildcard option that is the best compromise if the N66U and AC66U aren't powerful enough is the AC56U, but that is a two stream device (iMac is the machine that is used most, three stream 802.11n). Very unlikely I'd pick this as a result.

Personally think that the N66U is the best choice, however other opinions are wanted!

Thanks in advance! :)
 
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Think I've decided for myself, N66U...I see little reason to spend £70+ more on a three-stream AC router now when I only have one AC device, when I could spend a little more in the long run (£80 or so in three or four years time) to get a 4/5/6 stream device (with the AC87U coming out in July or so, this doesn't sound unrealistic).

Also, even if I have a 80Mbps connection, N will still be faster than the Internet connection anyway. Locally I don't do any huge transfers, just music and a few movies at most.

EDIT: Doing some more reading, Quantenna claim to have an 8-stream chipset coming out next year, while Broadcom claim to have a 6-stream chipset out this year. At the very least this will bring prices of current 802.11ac models down.

EDIT 2: Also took a look at the AC56U, as it appears to be a decent compromise at first glance. In terms of wireless performance it's a case of compromise: the AC56U obviously has faster AC performance, but drops off pretty quickly through walls etc. The N66U is of course slower, but the speeds drop off far more linearly (you're far more likely to get a signal in the garden with the N66U, it'll go a lot further). The AC56U is still better than my AEBS at the limits of its range, however the results on SmallNetBuilder are so slow that they do suggest unreliability. I often get a connection with my AEBS when outside, however it rarely works properly.

The AC56U has the same chipset as the AC68U, so it'll be far faster for VPN usage and QoS at high speeds (but of course you probably won't need QoS on a 60+Mbps fibre connection).
 
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Just updating the thread in case anybody with the same questions reads it.

Picked up an N66U, straight away installed Merlin. First impressions, signal strength is in a different league to the AirPort Extreme, and it seems rock solid. Physical build quality is surprisingly good as well. Setup is easy, however the QoS is a bit of a pain to deal with, and only "kind of" works. So will be installing a version of Tomato on it at some point. Even then, there are plenty of caveats: Toastman's Tomato build is apparently the best, but you then need another build for QoS on ADSL to work, AND the tweaks only work through scripts rather than the GUI. Yet more reading to do...

EDIT: Done a little more reading. Essentially, all the versions of Tomato all have the required patches, so their QoS is effectively the same. Therefore, I'd recommend just using Shibby, as it's easy to find, well supported and popular. AdvancedTomato is an option if you want a nicer looking GUI for Shibby's builds - you can flash between them, no wiping required.

Great introduction to QoS by Toastman is available here: http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/qos-tutorial.68795/
Some of his other guides on QoS are available here: http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/common-tomato-topics-help-information.31234/

EDIT 2: QoS is far better on Tomato. Installing Tomato is easy enough, but you MUST be extremely careful and flash the right build.

I'd personally do it by installing DD-WRT first, then Tomato. The instructions can be found here. Follow the web GUI instructions but DO NOT FLASH THE LINKED BUILD. Instead look at the "New K3.x Builds" section, download and flash "dd-wrt.v24-21676_NEWD-2_K3.x_mega_RT-N66U.trx from the FTP link as you would any normal Asus update, then flash Tomato in DD-WRT, then press and hold the reset button on the router.

If using AT, try changing the theme to Metro (Administration > Admin Access). Smaller text, fits more on screen.
 
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