[mzakharo1]

Many people dont realize, but WiFi chipset is very important. Get cheap/free stuff from your ISP, and it will give you trouble (especially under load/multiple clients). Buy expensive gear with Broadcomm/Qualcomm hardware in it, and you will be better off. ASUS with rt-merlin firmware is a solid choice.

Also, placement of router is very important. Most people have their wifi in the basement, where their cable/phone line comes in, spending some time, and running a physical wire somewhere to the center of the living space, setting up router on a shelf or a table will go a long way in propagation. I have mine setup in the center of my bungalow, and I have 5Ghz WiFI reaching from my driveway to the backyard, no issues, and never any hickups.

Also, if you pick a high end router (Like ASUS 86U with merlin) -> you get some proper Wifi diagnostic tools built in, like number of packet retransmits, bad FCS, etc, which will help you diagnose your issues.

Multiple people on the same band is not as big of an issue as many claim it is. 5Ghz (no B/G legacy frames), and 80MHz bandwidth ensures that most traffic is very short in actual airtime. Not perfect, but, it is orders of magnitude better than 2.4Ghz, despite there being really only 2 80MHz channels available. There is also, channel 165, which is 20Mhz only, but rarely occupied.

[hamandcheese]

FWIW, Xfinity provided me an "xFi" modem/router combo that performed great. I replaced it with a standalone modem + a Unifi Dream Machine from Ubiquiti, and my wifi speeds are significantly slower now. Still worth it to regain control of my network, though.

[post_break]

That makes no sense. That device is almost bleeding edge and should be just as fast if not faster than your router. Only thing I can think of is the ethernet port out of the modem isn't gigabit and that's why it's slower.

[hamandcheese]

I get full gigabit when wired in, it’s definitely the WiFi that is the bottleneck.

With the Dream Machine built-in AP I get 400-500mbps down, compared to the xFi which got nearly full gigabit speeds. This is with direct line of sight to the access point, maybe 8 feet away.

[qubitcoder]

Similar situation here. The AT&T-provided router for gigabit fiber performs significantly better than my new Ubiquiti "frisbee" access point that's mounted on the ceiling.

At a previous house, I was equally impressed with the WiFi speed and propagation with the stock AT&T router (a different manufacturer), which performed at nearly the theoretical max.

Perhaps ISPs are learning to provide higher end equipment? Of course, gigabit fiber already necessitates better than average equipment, lest you expect complaints from customers.

[thecureforzits]

> ASUS with rt-merlin firmware is a solid choice.

Just so long as you don't mind giving Trend Micro access to all your information.

[mzakharo1]

rt-merlin allows you explicitly to turn the TrendMicro stuff off, TrendMicro is only useful for QoS, and if you have a fat Internet pipe, you probably dont need it.

ASUS-merlin has DNS-over-TLS support, which, combined with NextDNS, will help you block trendmicro off if you really dont trust it.

[imtringued]

Usually the easiest solution to solve most Wifi problems is having multiple access points.

[mikelward]

I added a second one, and things got substantially worse. Devices would stick to the faraway access point because they could still just see it.

I tried things like "roaming assistant", to forcibly disconnect clients below a certain signal strength, but that interrupted ongoing WiFi phone calls and such.

It's possible that 802.11k and r help, but at the time I investigated, many clients didn't handle that properly.

Instead, I mounted one access point on the ceiling in the middle of my apartment, and WiFi is much better.