RT-AC68U

I still have an OG WRT54G in the attic in a box.  Also the AC 1900 TMobile Personal Hotspot, reflashed to what it is, a rebranded RT-AC68U, it's working flawlessly as a wifi mesh node. 

RT-AC68U works really well. I haven't needed to upgrade to AX, yet.

I haven't upgraded my network to anything exciting yet as I live in a small apartment and am waiting until we move. That and my wife is sensitive to noise (and we both WFH) so everything needs to be passively cooled/silent so no grabbing a pile of cheap 1U anything and going ham. Future will most likely be Ubiquiti 2.5 or 10gb depending on price/timing. Currently my home lab is a bunch of gear hooked up to two HPE 1820 fanless 48port switches. One for proxmox cluster traffic, one for network access. Outside of that, every other segment (her desk, her gaming setup, my gaming setup, etc) are all Netgear GS series silent switches. The "core" pair are smart and support LAG (of which the lab, and my main NAS are pairs). Router is a Asus AC68U that works like a champ. Four netgear switches hang off it. The Lab/NAS hang off one of the core switches. Wifi is handled by the router which is on top of an AV cabinet in the center of our apartment. Wifi is only used for phones and IoT devices. Anything remotely compute, from a work laptop, home desktop, Xbox, playstation, NAS, is all wired ethernet. Why did I chose the above? \- Cost \- Silence \- Size The router was well liked when I bought it 10-15 ago :)

50 devices says nothing. Let's take it slow: my low cost asus router does like 50 devices plus 2 cameras with low bandwidth usage. No issues. So explain first how many bandwidth consuming devices you got. 30 cams or 3? Second, routers came in 2 flavors, consumer and business. If you want lot of devices with ip reservation buy a used pro AP or router. Any advice on consumer router is a joke, even the *gaming* ones. Regarding consumer ones, my config started with ac68u from asus and worked steady on 60 square meters, now I've got mesh in a 250 sqm house, added a more powerful asus for coverage. Anyway, coverage is easy to diagnose ny rssi and router stats/logs. Start maybe here.

Asus aimesh, for years no reboot needed.

Get the Wi-Fi gen that supports most of your devices. At home, about 90% of our devices are Wi-Fi 5. We've been using the RT-AC68U (identical to AC-1900) for about 8 years now without any issues. Can still get good Wi-Fi between 3-4 walls. However, be aware of recent "backdoors" warnings with Asus routers.

1. My self hosting journey started off with some spare gaming PC parts I had kicking around that I was trying to find a use for. Now here I am with my media server that keeps my wife happy which means she likes my hobby ahah. Also Adguard for no ads on my home network - yay!! It's become a hobby now to just see what I can do with it and it's pretty fun stuff. I see why people find it so addicting. 2. The winning unit or units from this giveaway would help big time with networking bottlenecks. I'm rocking an old Asus AC68 router that definitely needs to be retired but the funds aren't there. Either that or the KVM would be awesome for being able to jump on while I'm away and need to take a look at something. On more than one occasion I've wanted to check something out because Plex or something wasn't working properly or the server wasn't available. 3. Honestly I find out about most stuff just from browsing this sub. Someone will mention something in the comments and then it sends me down the rabbit hole. Like in the home theater sub I just found out HDMI over Ethernet is a thing and I kinda want one to hook up a gaming PC to my TV in another room although it's completely unnecessary....but *now I can*. 4. If not networking gear as a prize - mass storage!!! Haha, I'm in Canada, drives are pricey, and I'm getting close to critical mass lol. If chosen to win, I would love the Flint 3 and the Comet. Y'all rock for doing this!

I still have a Asus AC-68U/AC 1900 I used for like 6 years. I use all Ubiquiti stuff now but I keep it for a backup. If I was looking for a consumer wireless router I'd go for a newer Asus. I had a tplink on that was just a cheap temporary one that I used when we moved and my Asus accidently got buried in the storage unit and it worked good but the tplink one my father in law bought is garbage so I dont know about those.

If that Asus is the RT-AC68U then it's at least meshable if you buy a newer Asus router to use as your main router. That's one of the things that I like about using AiMesh. You can get a better router, and still put your old one to work somewhere else in the house. My current RT-AX68U Pro replaced by RT-AC86U, and that replaced an RT-AC66U. All three are currently meshed, so the garage and driveway get a good signal, as well as the rest of the house.

Yes, using 5Ghz for my main devices. 2.4 for my IoT devices on different SSID. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with this stuff, but I have always setup my own routers for the past 20 some yrs. I am a bit of a geek tho, or so they tell me. Lol. I’m extremely happy with this Asus RT-AX86U Pro. Covers my whole house and nary a problem. Previous router was Asus RT-AC68U that also gave me full coverage and no issues but was maybe just a little slower - but not noticeable.

If the cabins are only 100ft away I’d just run ethernet cables to each and put in a access point and be done. I guess you could use conduit but I’d grab a pick, dig the line 5” below, and be done with it. I’ve had Ethernet cables outside above the ground along the outside of my house and it’s been fine for 5 years. If it fails I’ll replace. Cable is cheap. Get some ASUS 68 routers off eBay for like $30 and configure them easily in access point mode to make them your wifi points. If the 2 ASUS routers and the cable cost more than $100 total you did something wrong. Connect the two cable runs to the router in one of the cabins - done https://www.ebay.com/itm/256402485694?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=256402485694&targetid=2299003535955&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9198132&poi=&campaignid=21214315381&mkgroupid=161363866036&rlsatarget=pla-2299003535955&abcId=9407526&merchantid=5308216589&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh9CB0kWC3rC6m31g23C9uRF8&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIx4KYksrSjAMV8EX_AR29FwU3EAQYAiABEgIvK_D_BwE

If the cabins are only 100ft away I’d just run ethernet cables to each and put in a access point and be done. I guess you could use conduit but I’d grab a pick, dig the line 5” below, and be done with it. I’ve had Ethernet cables outside above the ground along the outside of my house and it’s been fine for 5 years. If it fails I’ll replace. Cable is cheap. Get some ASUS 68 routers off eBay for like $30 and configure them easily in access point mode to make them your wifi points. If the 2 ASUS routers and the cable cost more than $100 total you did something wrong. Connect the two cable runs to the router in one of the cabins - done https://www.ebay.com/itm/256402485694?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=256402485694&targetid=2299003535955&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9198132&poi=&campaignid=21214315381&mkgroupid=161363866036&rlsatarget=pla-2299003535955&abcId=9407526&merchantid=5308216589&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh9CB0kWC3rC6m31g23C9uRF8&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIx4KYksrSjAMV8EX_AR29FwU3EAQYAiABEgIvK_D_BwE