Is there a particular difference in quality for brands of routers?

[Elarion]

My wife and I finally bought a house, and after being here for around a month, the internet in our office is not super great. We thought about trying to run ethernet to it, but there's not really a good way to get from the router to the computers. The red ball is where the router is, and the two green balls are where the computers are.

 

With this in mind, we were wondering if there's any particular brand of router that is superior to the others. We have a very old Asus router right now that seems to be struggling to punch through the walls over that long of a distance. We were looking at these three, and they all have wildly different prices.

 

TP-Link AXE5400 ($200)

ASUS RT-AXE7800 ($300)

ASUS GT-AXE16000 ($630)

 

Right now, our PCs can't utilize WiFi 6e, but we are looking at upgrading quite soon, as they're both over 7 years old. Does anybody have any feedback on this situation or what we should buy?

 

[Needfuldoer]

Is this a ground level, or second floor? What's above/below this space?

 

Ideally, I'd recommend installing the router somewhere near the stairs.

[The 8-Bit Time Traveller]

The beam patterns on Wifi routers is designed to put as much power horizontally, and very little vertically, You can picture the beam as a large donut centered around the router antenna.. In the image, it appears as though your office is at a higher level than the room with the router, which means that it may be outside the beam of the router. I would suggest wall mounting the router  about halfway up the wall separating the two large rooms, extra points if you can drill through the wall and put it on the other side, so that there are less walls between the router and your office.

 

That said, there are major difference both in configuration options and performance on routers, best is to check the specs and reviews.

[Elarion]

58 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Is this a ground level, or second floor? What's above/below this space?

 

Ideally, I'd recommend installing the router somewhere near the stairs.

It's an odd split level. The living room (where the router is) is at the level of the front door. The kitchen (at the top of the stairs) is part of the upper floor, where there is the hallway leading to the office, master bedroom, and kids bedroom.

 

Not pictured here are the stairs leading downstairs, to the laundry room, garage, etc.

[seanondemand]

That's an interesting layout. Have you considered a mesh system? How is the modem/router combo provided to you by the ISP connected (as in, is it a fiber connection, or coax, or something else?)

[Donut417]

9 hours ago, Elarion said:

Right now, our PCs can't utilize WiFi 6e, but we are looking at upgrading quite soon, as they're both over 7 years old. Does anybody have any feedback on this situation or what we should buy?

 

WiFi 6e isnt going to help you. 6 Ghz will have less range and penetration power compared to 5Ghz. 

 

As far as running cables goes, basements/crawlspaces and attics are basically the two best ways. Outside of that the other solutions might not be practical. So if you have to rely on WiFi a mesh system as mentioned by @seanondemand would probably be your best bet. As long as your home isnt made out of concrete as that doesn't do well for WiFi. 

 

A lot of ASUS routers support their AI mesh standard. This allows you to build a custom mesh network with a variety of routers. What might be a good solution is a few routers that have dual 5Ghz radios where one can be used for backhaul with the main router unit. You would want dual 5 Ghz radios so you can have both 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz in use at the satellite unit. 

 

If you don't want the build it your self option. You could also looking in to actual mesh system. My sister has the first gen Google mesh and they work pretty OK. I don't like the lack of options and they don't support her full connection speed, but they work fairly reliably. 

[NobleGamer]

11 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

WiFi 6e isnt going to help you. 6 Ghz will have less range and penetration power compared to 5Ghz.

Agreed. It does not boost 5GHz or 2.4GHz speeds. At best, 6E improves connection reliability at 5 GHz, but not throughput.

13 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

So if you have to rely on WiFi a mesh system as mentioned by @seanondemand would probably be your best bet. As long as your home isnt made out of concrete as that doesn't do well for WiFi.

If wiring the APs together is not possible. It's more a question of whether the mesh APs can be placed within 5 GHz range of each other so that it's backhaul is fast enough for devices to not be perceived as too slow.

 

For instance, I can get 5GHz on Wifi 5 with 100mbps through one regular wall at ~25 ft. But my mesh APs had a wifi backhaul and were put further away than that (all else constant), then we should expect devices to connect to mesh at less than 100mbps right?

 

 

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, NobleGamer said:

at less than 100mbps right?

No one can say. Because it's not just about distance and walls. There are other devices the operate on the WiFi spectrum. I will say this when I use to have my gaming machine on WiFi on 5Ghz going thru two walls about 20 feet between the router and computer, with the computer being on an upper floor, I would be able to get 200+ Mbps. That being said the closes neighbor is OLD and I don't think she has WiFi, and when I scan for WiFi I pick up maybe 3 or 4 AP's and they are very low signal strength. So my spectrum is relatively clean. Mind you this was all on WiFi 4, since I was able to move the modem and router in to my bedroom and do a wired connection. While I have seen we don't get full speeds through out the house, we get 100+ Mbps in most areas, which is sufficient to our needs. 

[NobleGamer]

5 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

No one can say. Because it's not just about distance and walls. There are other devices the operate on the WiFi spectrum.

I was trying to just provide an example to make a point about considering mesh if theres wifi backhaul. Let me be more direct:

 

• When using a specific AP, wifi version, and distance I get a certain throughput using a device (100mbps in my example)
• If I put a device even further away from that AP than before, and all else is constant, then I cannot expect to get the same throughput speed, correct? (<100 mbps in my example)
• Now replace that further device & original AP both with mesh APs. If you expect the same or faster speeds on the backhaul between the two, you better be able to explain the difference in specs between these scenarios, or else be prepared for throughput disappointment