ZenWiFi Pro XT12

I have an Asus XT12 mesh system with two points. I recently had to factory reset them due to a borked FW update and since I was messing with it I took the time to separate my 2.4 and 5ghz bands. Everything is much happier now.

I have a 2 nodes ASUS XT12 with a dedicated wifi6 wireless backhaule. The 2nd node is 2 stories upstairs (bricks walls and wood ceilings) and I can use the full 1Gb/s internet speed provided. Before I had a ubiquiti amplitude. Coverage was ok but the max speed I’ve got was 500 Mb/s. The asus is expensive but works really well. In my situation the 2 nodes are communicating at 2Gb/s. The nodes have also 2,5Gb ports. So attaching wired devices allows to communicate really well.

WiFi Mesh in my experience is great if there are good sight lines and few thick walls! Can you wire the house for Ethernet backhaul? My wife won’t let me wire the flat (which twists and turns and has very thick 19th century walls - and has the internet intake in absolutely the farthest corner from where I’d want it) so I’ve finally just gotten a decent mesh going with two Asus BQ16s and two Zen XT12. I found the high end processors in the 12 made a huge difference when I upgraded from the XT8. The BQ16 are a really good upgrade but not absolutely necessary: I could have stayed with an all XT12 set up but the XT8’s were simply not powerful enough for my set up. Obviously I have a long daisy chain going but it now works well and is fast. In a consumer/prosumer set up you won’t get the monitoring/notifying you seem to want - they all are pretty much set it up and hold your breath.

Asus? I thjink they are over priced but worth it. I've used both, Deco works when you got the right FW loaded. But asus has better funtionality for power users / home labbers. I personally have 2 xt12 and 2 et8

Thanks for the detailed reply! I used to use eero Pro 6 before moving to ASUS, reason why I made the switch was because for some reason my hue lights (I have 30-40 of them) suddenly became online all the time, my guess was that eero was using a similar channel for 2.4GHz as the hue hub and there was no configuration flexibility on eero. I actually switched to TP link Deco first, everything worked perfectly for a few days - better range, better performance, until I ran “network optimization” and the router decided to switch the channel on the 2.4GHz bands and broke my hue again… and again, there was no option to choose the channel manually so I was stuck again. I switched to XT12 so I can force the 2.4GHz channel, and everything’s been running perfectly since the switch. I’d hate to lose the flexibility on the configuration for sure of if I move bank to eero or tp link again. Guess I should stick with what I have until they die then :) thanks again for your input

Getting 1Gps wireless is going to require specific clients and a higher end mesh (likely WiFi 7). So you really need to specify a budget. High level you want a 3 unit (unless you meant 3 floors + the basement, then 4 units). Get a tri-band unit. I have great success with the Eero Pro 6E, Asus XT12s (really hard to find now but XT8/9 are easy to find and have really solid performance for the price). The Deco BE63 are on sale and WiFi 7 and the XE70s are solid.

Backhaul is how the routers talk to each other. It's best to do it wired. But, if you can't they will use one of the channels on the router that becomes a dedicated circuit (band) where they talk to each other. That's why you need at least three bands. If you want Wi-Fi, 7 I would recommend the bt-10 or the expensive BE98 pro. If you just want Wi-Fi 6e, any of the routers I mentioned before would work.. et8, et9,xt9,xt12,et12. Additionally, avoid the BQ 16 and the be96u, the firmware on the routers is buggy and has not been updated. I have personally used the et8, xt9 and the be98 pro. They have all been fantastic.