I am in the process of replacing my home 8 year old wifi router and have noticed that most new router offerings are geared towards the 802.11ax standard for 2.5 g routers. In 2024 there is the impending 802.11be standard that can be implemented. Do you have any advice on how this will change the performance of my one DULLHB version 2 and two DULLHB version 3 receivers on an 802.11ax local home network. I am considering using a dual 2.5 ghz channel router with the LocoFi traffic confined to one of the channels. I notice that the newer products have dual 2.5 ghz channels rather than 2.5 and 5.0 ghz channels.
I am particularly thinking of the Asus RT-AX88U dual 2.5 channel router. I need to improve the strength of the Wifi signal throughout my house as I am in a hole with no G5 level reception from my mobile carrier and ATT refuses to lay fiber cable in my neighborhood. Comcast would require and expensive excavation for an underground cable from their nearest fiber box. No one else has layed fiber cable in the neightborhood.
The newer standards like 802.11ax and 802.11be are backwards compatible. In other words, they will support any clients running on older technology like 802.11b/g/n. However, it may be possible to configure the routers to turn off the support for older clients (or it may come enabled that way by default). So, care needs to be taken when setting up the router in that support for older clients is enabled. There should be no change in performance.
It maybe a good idea to dedicate the 2.4GHz network to LocoFi.
We really do not think that brands should matter. However, we have heard from customers regarding Asus RT-AX series not working as intended. On the other hand, Netgear routers seem to perform much more reliably. It is impossible for us to test each and every router and combination. So, what we just mentioned is what we heard from some of our customers. Others reading this post can chime in and provide more inputs with respect to their experience.
Increasing strength of WiFi signal can mean two things (or both) i.e. range and throughput. They are also interrelated in the sense that as the range decreases (the signal gets weaker as you move away from the access point), so does the throughput. 5GHz was invented to increase throughput at the cost of reduced range. On the other hand, 2.4GHz can offer longer ranges at reduced speeds. One way to boost both range and throughput could be to setup a mesh network where you have multiple access points distributed throughout the house. Of course, you will need to leave the 2.4GHz open for LocoFi to work.