Originally Posted by
Boraxo
The Work From Home thread is a bit cluttered so I thought it better to resuscitate this one to address wifi routers. I am currently using a NetGear Nighthawk AC 1900 - so this is 5 year old tech and I suspect there are better products now. It has been pretty solid but I think it is starting to feel the strain now we have 4 people working from home (2 students on zoom), plus iphones and sometimes a couple of streaming TVs.
I was advised to consider a mesh product - my friends at leasehackr like the Ubiquiti but my neighbor swears by his Netgear Orbi RBK50 (AC3000 speed/3-band) mesh setup. However I suspect our speed issues stem less from signal quality (most devices are within 50 feet of the router) and more from bandwith and prioritization (need MU-MIMO). So maybe I should be considering a Netgear Nighthawk X6(R8000) which would up my speed to AC3200 across 3 bands, or do I need to splurge and pay 2x more for the Netgear Nighthawk X12 with AX6000 speed?
The X12 would only potentially be worthwhile if you have Wi-Fi 6 devices at home. Otherwise, it might not be worth the money over the X6, at least short-term. However, it might still be worth it if you plan on keeping it for a while as I imagine most of the major bandwidth consumers (laptops, etc.) will eventually get replaced.
As for mesh, it's not so much distance as the presence of walls and other obstructions. Those will degrade the signal, causing some devices to needlessly downgrade to a much slower transfer rate (if not drop down to a potentially crowded 2.4GHz band entirely). Mesh systems make it less likely for those downgrades to happen, improving overall efficiency.