ASUS ZenWiFi AX6600 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System (XT8 1PK) - Whole Home Coverage up to 2750 sq.ft & 4+ rooms, AiMesh, Included Lifetime Internet Security, Easy Setup, 3 SSID, Parental Control, White

I got my first wifi access point about 12 years ago, from Amazon. A Netgear WGR614 Wireless-G Router, for a small apartment. It ran well for 5 years. I have had a few others since. Linksys, Cisco, Netgear. I spent 10+ years as a sys admin, "IT" guy, so have setup many more wifi systems.Times have changed, technology has advanced.Enter the ASUS ZenWiFi AX6600 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System. Wow!I live in central California, its Comcast "Xfinity" territory. I have 1Gbit broadband over coax cable (still 40Mbits upstream, sadly).I first tried the Comcast "Xfinity wifi Gateway" with 3 "xFi pods", in my 3 story 3400 square foot, almost new-construction house.It was a good concept, easy to setup, and easy to add the pods as range extenders. Well, it was not actually good. The pods are not powerful enough for an actual house, and they are slow to switch between them as you move in the house, so you end up tied to a distant one for minutes at a time...an Intolerable system all around, unless maybe you are somewhere very small?! The gateway alone for a small house would probably be just fine. (they just released a newer version gateway, probably better?)BUT, the comcast wireless gateway can be easily set into "bridge" mode, and any WAP connected to it directly via ethernet cable. So, that's what i did. I now have the comcast gateway as a bridge device (avoids double NAT among other things) and have directly connected it to one AX6600. This is physically located on the middle of 3 floors, about 20% the way in from the front of the house. A second AX6600 is on the same floor, about 20% in from the back of the house. So each one is covering their half of the floor above it and below it, and roughly half of the floor its on. It works great, strong signals!! (One cool feature is the units talk to each other on a dedicated 3rd band, so that doesn't use any bandwidth from the other 2 data bands.)In addition to just the raw speed of the AX6600, the Asus router app for IOS serves as a slick central point for monitoring and administration. I think its really great, and feature-rich. It shows the strength of the "backhaul" channel between the 2 AX6600 routers in the mesh, which in my case is "GREAT" (-47dBm). You can of course see all devices, their "interface" aka channel (2.4 or 5Ghz), signal strength, real-time throughput, as well as apply a bandwidth limiter or block altogether, and many more typical features of any modern WAP.I have on average 12-14 devices connected, phones, tablet, cameras, smart TV, thermostats and 2-3 computers. Our most intensive machine is an Alienware gaming PC with "killer wifi 6" at the top far end of the house, and it gets close to 200Mbits down, 30Mbits up, and the latency is under 15ms, often 9-10ms. (more a product of the comcast broadband itself i beleive). Zero issues when gaming. I even get 40Mbits all the way in out at the back of the backyard, haha.Suffice to say, the Asus AX6600 has solved all the issues I had covering a large home, and is easy to setup and administer. Also cool is that you can add any ASUS wifi6 routers into the mesh, so IF i wanted to enlarge the mesh, I could do it with "lesser" model Asus wifi 6 routers at any time.Overall this is an impressive product, and by far the best I have ever used. Its powerful, feature rich, and simple to use. Its done an impressive job covering a large house with strong signals and throughput!! I would recommend it.

This system eliminated all the issues I was having with the rental XB7 modem/router from Xfinity (devices unable to connect, others on the fringe of range, no signal in my backyard...oh and that pesky monthly rental charge...). I originally purchased three XD6 routers (2+1) but quickly realized my mistake a couple days after I set everything up; I wasn't utilizing the 2.5G WAN port from the Arris S33 modem that I purchased at the same time. I never initially considered the XT8's from the beginning because I was going to use the ethernet backhaul across the entire AiMesh and they were more expensive. Thankfully Amazon has a great return policy so I exchanged the single XD6 for a single XT8 to use as my main router in the mesh system...and it's awesome!! On average I get 1360-1400 MBps download and 42-44 MBps upload to the main XT8 router then seamlessly distributed over the ethernet backhaul to the two XD6 routers, one at the front of the house and the other in the kitchen in the back of the house. I can assure you there are no dead zones in my house anymore, a little overkill but it works great! My home is a three bedroom 2200 square foot two story colonial style (~28 ft X ~30 ft footprint), full basement below, and single car attached garage with a cape style bedroom over it. The routers run roughly down the middle on the first floor so coverage is great up, down, and side to side.The "web" pages for the system setup and maintenance are easy to use and navigate with no lag or delay. There are many options for various settings that a professional network engineer will appreciate (I'm just an enthusiast so most of them are beyond my current knowledge). I also like you can choose your own pictures (and Windows icon files!) for each device and give them they're own name. Much more freedom than the simplified Xfinity system. I also setup a weekly system reboot to help keep it fresh and running smoothly.If you go for the ASUS AiMesh system, use the ethernet backhaul and you won't be disappointed!!