There is a TON of wifi interference in the apartment where I live, and I'm hoping that upgrading to something more powerful than the ISP provided box is enough to correct the issue. All channels are saturated on 2.4 ghz and the connection is abysmal, even at -50 dBm. On 5 ghz AC, it isn't bad, but my bedroom is just far enough from the router (living room) to cause an unstable connection at only -95 dBm. Hardwiring isn't an option, especially not for my laptop (MacBook Pro Retina) which would require a thunderbolt to ethernet adapter. I've somewhat improved the situation by setting up the ISP router to broadcast two access points, one for 2.4 ghz and one for 5 ghz so that I can go back and forth when one band is acting up. I've also picked the least saturated channels on 2.4 ghz.
At this point, my only option is the R7000, but I'd like to get a bit more input before I drop 150€ on some hardware. I'm building a desktop at the same time, so any money saved is good.
Both of the following tests are at 12:30 am with low network activity.
2.4 Ghz N band speed test:
5 Ghz AC band speed test:
I'm going to try to avoid the 2.4 Ghz band as much as possible because its an absolute mess. I'm one more dropped connection short of installing Kali and moving everyone's router into the same channel, very very far away from my channel. Will a high end router like the R7000 or AC68U be powerful enough to broadcast 5 Ghz through a medium sized (3 bedroom) apartment?
Edit: Dropped 5 Ghz AC from 80 Mhz to 20 Mhz, which brought me up to -85 dBm and improved my connection speed slightly. In the living room, I max out my smartphone tester at -40 dBm. The 2.4 Ghz band was already at 20 Mhz.
This is what I put up with on 2.4 Ghz N when its running slowly.
Edited by onions, 27 January 2016 - 01:29 AM.