Need suggestions for ac wifi router that can support 25+ devices simultaneously

[Ismail Arif]

Hi guys.

 

Just moved to a bigger house. My current router, a Tenda D1201 dual band modem router could not handle 25+ devices at the same time as some could not connect to the network. I have 11 people living in my house and most of them have 2+ devices; phones, laptops, consoles. Looking for a new router that can handle all of these devices. I got my eye on a Netgear Nighthawk R7000, looks kinda capable. Any other suggestions?

 

Not all of these devices are on the 5GHz band though. Therefore, the newer triband routers may seem overkill for me.  

[zinton]

Not sure how complicated you want this to go. But you get one of these access points plugged into a router
http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-AC-LR/dp/B015PRCBBI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457668274&sr=8-1&keywords=ubiquiti+ap+ac

Ive heard people gush about these and the price is pretty good considering its being hailed as a pro-grade like

 

Oh yeah and here's a router some people would pair with these
http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeRouter-Advanced-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00YFJT29C/ref=pd_sim_147_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41GEBnLIf4L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=0REBT1N9AWG2KTZX204Y

[Ismail Arif]

4 minutes ago, zinton said:

Not sure how complicated you want this to go. But you get one of these access points plugged into a router
http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-AC-LR/dp/B015PRCBBI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457668274&sr=8-1&keywords=ubiquiti+ap+ac

Ive heard people gush about these and the price is pretty good considering its being hailed as a pro-grade like

 

Oh yeah and here's a router some people would pair with these
http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeRouter-Advanced-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00YFJT29C/ref=pd_sim_147_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41GEBnLIf4L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=0REBT1N9AWG2KTZX204Y

They don't ship to Australia. And i checked the Ubiquiti APs in the aussie market and they were expensive as hell, AU$ 250+ for AP alone. Plus, i have never used APs before. Is it a better alternative than a new modem router? 

[zinton]

Just now, Ismail Arif said:

They don't ship to Australia. And i checked the Ubiquiti APs in the aussie market and they were expensive as hell, AU$ 250+ for AP alone. Plus, i have never used APs before. Is it a better alternative than a new modem router? 

Shucks, and honestly like everyone else on this form Im really just parroting linus. So Im not really a router expert but yeah Ive heard these are great in terms of range and managing multiple users just like a professional grade router would.

[Razor512]

With each WiFi radio, you will be sharing air time on the channel. Most routers will handle 25 clients with no problem. Many people in the past have even gotten 50 clients running on an old WRT54GL.

 

To minimize performance impact of many users, you could add more radios, for example, a TP-link C3200 would handle more clients than the R7000 http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-Tri-Band-Wireless-Archer-C3200/dp/B00YY3XSSA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457674039&sr=8-1&keywords=tp-link+c3200

 

Depending on your connection speed, it would not really matter unless you have a WAN connection in the 400+Mbps range where the overhead from airtime sharing starts to cause issues (assuming all clients are trying to saturate the connection at the same time.

 

 

 

For the easiest setup, the R7000 is very good, as it has a very even upload and download priority (it tries to give everything an equal amount of throughput).

 

Since it does not offer band steering, it will be difficult to force a balance of clients on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz band, but with 25 users, it will not have any issues with that work load.

 

Here is a test of my R7000 and how it does a good job in sharing the throughput.

 

Furthermore, it has some really good QOS presets which does a generally good job at keeping ping times low while the network is being saturated, while also identifying bulk traffic and keeping it in a low priority pool.

 

If you can get a good deal on the R7000, then it may be worth a try, especially if you have a decent return policy.

 

For many consumer level routers, they tend to have the same WiFi chipsets and front end components as many enterprise level APs, the main difference is that the enterprise stuff goes through more of a validation process to handle an enterprise workload.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Ismail Arif said:

They don't ship to Australia. And i checked the Ubiquiti APs in the aussie market and they were expensive as hell, AU$ 250+ for AP alone. Plus, i have never used APs before. Is it a better alternative than a new modem router? 

There is the budget UAP-AC-LITE availible.

1 hour ago, zinton said:

Shucks, and honestly like everyone else on this form Im really just parroting linus. So Im not really a router expert but yeah Ive heard these are great in terms of range and managing multiple users just like a professional grade router would.

Then don't recomend them - The ERX's are a terrible product to be honest, the ER Lite is the base I would recomend but in this case I wouldn't want to - they're difficult to setup, not something your average user can use.