Home router with wifi6

[Dieselboy]

My Meraki licensing ran out on Friday and it slipped my mind until Friday morning when the home office network literally ground to a halt and said "no way jose".

I went to the local computer hifi store and bought a Netgear. This lasted 15 minutes at home before it also ground to a halt. Maybe it was doing a firmware update while I was upding the config and reboot - no idea, but reset button did not return it to factory condition so off I went to get another.

I now have a https://www.asus.com/au/Networking/RT-AX56U/

I really only need a switch and wifi6 for future proofing. I never realised how expensive routers have become. This thing cost me $320AUD! It seems decent although I am not using the WAN port at all. I have a OpenWRT router that does the WAN so it goes like this:

ASUS wifi router | LAN port -> LAN port | openwrt router | WAN port-> 50M internet

The slightly annoying thing is, even though I added a route on the ASUS to give it a default route to the internet via the Openwrt router, it cannot do a firmware update because it says "WAN port disconnected".

I plan to try powering the openwrt router via the ASUS usb port. The openwrt router that I am using is this one:

https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/

[Dieselboy]

Just found this! https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/ 

[deanwebb]

Do you actually get a gig throughput anywhere in your home, or does that vary with distance to the AP? And how well does the mesh work out/how easy is it to set up?

[Dieselboy]

Haha nope! I really only wanted wifi 6 for future-proofing as well as that it copes better with busy wifi network interference (I live in an apartment and there's tons of apartments nearby with (misconfigured) wifi!

[deanwebb]

So how does the speed of 802.11ax compare with 802.11ac?

[Dieselboy]

Not necessarily speed, but more a better quaity wifi

How is 802.11ax different from 802.11ac?
802.11ac operates in the 5Ghz range only, while 802.11ax operates in both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz ranges, thus creating more available channels. For example, early chipsets support a total of 12 channels, eight in the 5Ghz and four in the 2.4Ghz range.

With 802.11ac, MU-MIMO is limited to downlink transmissions only. 802.11ax creates  MU-MIMO connections so that with downlink MU-MIMO an access point may transmit concurrently to multiple receivers and with uplink MU-MIMO an endpoint may simultaneously receive from multiple transmitters. 

802.11ax supports up to eight MU-MIMO transmissions at a time, up from four with 802.11ac. OFDMA is new with 802.11ax, as are several other technologies, like trigger-based random access, dynamic fragmentation and spatial frequency re-use, all aimed at improving efficiency.

Finally, 802.11ax introduces a technology called "target wake time" to improve wake and sleep efficiency on smartphones and other mobile devices. This technology is expected to make a significant improvement in battery life.

[deanwebb]

Ah, so it's more about multiple throughput channels than actual speed. Good to know, thanks!