Suggest basic dual band router and dongle for laptop

rdst_1

Hi,
I live in a small 1000 sq ft 3-floor house, out of which only the ground floor is occupied for now. I live at a farm so have no wifi interference issues that one usually faces in cities. I also have a 7000sq ft cow shed approx 100ft away from the house. Right now I am using a single band router - TP-Link 941HP which has a very good range which easily covers both, my house and shed and provides good enough speed for my measly 12Mbps internet connection.
I am currently installing 4-5 wireless cameras in the cow shed and since the speeds (according to the testing I have already done) for viewing the live streams is not upto the mark, I've thought of upgrading my network by spending the least possible money I can. So, I am looking to shift the current router to the shed to handle the cameras and then hardwire it with Cat-6 cable to a new home router that I want to buy. Current number of devices at the home are also just 4 - 2 phones capable of connecting to 5Ghz , a TV and a laptop. So need a router which provides basic functionality with good enough range on both bands and thinking of upgrading the laptop capabilities by purchasing a good dual band dongle for it, but only if those are reliable. Had also faced some issues playing content from the laptop OTA on the TV, so thinking that this upgrade might solve that issue as well. The laptop is around 20ft away the router with 1 wall in between and the TV is 7ft away with 1 wall in between.
I have perused the market and read a few articles on smallnetbuilder which have convinced me that I basically only need a basic router. A natural upgrade seems to be the TP-Link C58HP, a copy of my current router (but with dual bands) which has shown to have excellent range and reliability for me,but willing to give other options a try. Please advice based on your experiences.
TIA

Kaleen Bhaiya

If range is to be given a priority then MR50G from Mercusys can be a good option both for 2.4 and 5ghz.

D C

Assuming your shed cameras are 2.4ghz, 941HP is a great extended range router, shift that to cover the shed.

Get a tp-link a6/c6 for home, get a cat6 till shed and put 941HP there in access point mode(turn off dhcp, give it a static ip(check for subnets), assign that ip in home router).

But A6/c6 might not be enough for your home, across all three floors. Might have to take a look at other extended range routers in the future.

High Power Routers | TP-Link India

TP Link - High Power Routers

www.tp-link.com

rdst_1

Kaleen Bhaiya said:
If range is to be given a priority then MR50G from Mercusys can be a good option both for 2.4 and 5ghz.

It is definitely one of the routers under consideration considering it's price point, as is Tenda offerings like their AC23.

D C said:
Assuming your shed cameras are 2.4ghz, 941HP is a great extended range router, shift that to cover the shed.

Get a tp-link a6/c6 for home, get a cat6 till shed and put 941HP there in access point mode(turn off dhcp, give it a static ip(check for subnets), assign that ip in home router).

But A6/c6 might not be enough for your home, across all three floors. Might have to take a look at other extended range routers in the future.

High Power Routers | TP-Link India

TP Link - High Power Routers

www.tp-link.com

That is exactly what the plan is currently. Earlier I was wanting to use the 941HP in the shed as a wireless range extender, but shifted the thinking to hardwiring it instead and using as an AP. Plus not worried about whole 3 floor coverage right now from the home router apart from 2.4Ghz throughout the whole 3 floors.
There are a lot of newer models it seems, like the Archer C64 in the C6/A6 range and similarly the Archer C80 instead of the Archer C9/A9 which are wave 2 AC products. And then there are outliers like the Mercusys and Tenda which are also extremely VFM, only if reliable.

kiran6680

I hope the cows don't mind the blinky lights at night, otherwise cover the lights with aluminium foil or something.

Due to the inverse square law on signal strength, 4 routers of Rs 1000 each distributed across an area work much much better than one router of Rs 4000.

If there is no constraint of multiple routers used as access points, it will give better coverage.

rdst_1

kiran6680 said:
I hope the cows don't mind the blinky lights at night, otherwise cover the lights with aluminium foil or something.

Due to the inverse square law on signal strength, 4 routers of Rs 1000 each distributed across an area work much much better than one router of Rs 4000.

If there is no constraint of multiple routers used as access points, it will give better coverage.

Well, thanks to no wireless interference and the awesome range that my current router has, even 1 is more than enough. I get usable signal more than 200ft away from my house. So, this router will be more than enough to cover the shed by itself considering it already provides a signal far beyond the shed while sitting in my house. And it's workload isn't going to be high either. It will be connected to, at best, 6 wireless cameras.
Unfortunately, the C58HP is out of contention as it only has 100Mbps ethernet ports. I probably don't need more than 100Mbps speeds right now, but it will be a shame to buy a router without 1Gbps ports in 2021.