re: Home Mesh Wifi

Update firmly bought into Asus koolaid after spending half the morning on smallnetbuilder. Purchased an 86U and going to see how the range fares with that and put my old 56U into AP mode.

Then I'll just scoop up the inevitable sub-$50 AC1900 sales on Amazon to grab aimesh compatible hardware to increase coverage.

Three advantages:

(1) now i don't need to buy a PoE switch (which I would have to because those other mesh systems dont provide enough ports to plug in my existing crap). Yeah i could have gotten a simple gig switch but why pay $20 for a 4port dumb switch when i can spend $100 and get 8-10 ports + PoE?
(2) i keep all the Asus firmware features that I've come to love and don't have to manage everything on a damn phone screen.
(3) having full-on routers serve as additional mesh points means they can do tons of stuff a tuning fork antenna or limited AP 'mesh' point would not be able to. already set up a robot on craigslist to watch for used asus routers to pop up that are compatible with aimesh

so in short this is the cheapest solution and i don't have to compromise on features.

$199 out the door at B&H Camera with 2 day expedited shipping.

google would have cost $250 + another $50-$100 for PoE switch + hassle of cutting & running more ethernet.