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What's the fuss with MU MIMO routers?

Nikkel

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We'll have fibre available in the area soon and I have to scratch a new router itch lol! The packages will come with its own router but I just smaak a new one.
Budget is about R2.5k and been looking at the ASUS - RT-AC65P Wireless AC1750 Mobile Gaming Router Dual-band (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) Gigabit Ethernet

I currently have an Asus DSL-AC52U which I'm happy with on ADSL ... It has a WAN port to use with fibre so I can keep on using it but I wana know what improvements will MU MIMO
2.4 GHz 3 x 3 & 5 GHz 3 x 3 bring to the table?
 
I'm sure other networking experts will have more in-depth reasons, but from a layman, it means it can serve multiple devices at once.
With a normal router, it round robins between serving requests for devices.
For instance, if you have a phone, tablet and TV connected via WiFi, your router is switching very quickly between serving your phone, tablet and TV.

With MU-MIMO it can serve multiple requests at once. So if you have 6 devices connected and your router can handle 3 simultaneous streams, your router could send out 3 requests at once, taking much less time than having to send one at a time.

A note though is that your devices need to support MU-MIMO as well. In my house that's just our 2x phones and Nvidia Shield that support and use MU-MIMO so don't notice much of a difference there.
 
OK so far my phone and the 2 Xiaomi Mi Box S I have does support 2x2 mimo and I never knew it...would make sense to get a mimo router for the TV boxes then...not too fussed with the phone...
 
Save your $, wait for wifi 6 (AX AFAIR) Vs spendon R2500 on one over priced router.

These gaming routers for the most part are all bark , bucks & no bite.

Keep in mind , as with all devices, speeds are under IDEAL situations. What is the rough distance from where you plan to get this to the devices, and how many walls are in the way? Keep in mind fridges, CC light tubes, magnets (large speakers), baby monitors, etc etc etc will all interfere.

Also things like netflix need < 12Mbps AFAIR. A EdgerouterX (not perfect but what is) has great SQM , pair that with 2x Ubiquiti AP's and you'll spend +- R2500 but have a MUCH better, more feature rish, expandable sys.




 
Save your $, wait for wifi 6 (AX AFAIR) Vs spendon R2500 on one over priced router.

These gaming routers for the most part are all bark , bucks & no bite.

Keep in mind , as with all devices, speeds are under IDEAL situations. What is the rough distance from where you plan to get this to the devices, and how many walls are in the way? Keep in mind fridges, CC light tubes, magnets (large speakers), baby monitors, etc etc etc will all interfere.

Also things like netflix need < 12Mbps AFAIR. A EdgerouterX (not perfect but what is) has great SQM , pair that with 2x Ubiquiti AP's and you'll spend +- R2500 but have a MUCH better, more feature rish, expandable sys.




Just for interest sake, can I connect the unifi ap to my existing router via lan and switch off wifi on router? not to clued up with the unifi goodies
 
Just for interest sake, can I connect the unifi ap to my existing router via lan and switch off wifi on router? not to clued up with the unifi goodies
Yes...you can. You will need either the Unifi controller hardware or the Controller software installed. Or... another option... configure the AP through a mobile app
 
Just read up on the new wifi 6... looks like I'll postpone for a bit

Thanks for the info guys!
 
Just for interest sake, can I connect the unifi ap to my existing router via lan and switch off wifi on router? not to clued up with the unifi goodies
Correct. I would grab the Edgerouter X , mainly for the SQM and basic soft-firewall and use the Asus as a AP by disabling its DHCP server.
 

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