Wireless 1080p streaming with Asus RT-AC66U Router

manny9

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Hi, I mentioned in one of the other thread that I was looking at streaming 1080p movies (Blu ray folder structure and ISO) through wireless. The Problem for me is that I don't have CAT6 cable in my flat and all this while my unRaid server (antec 902) was in the living room where I keep my Popcorn hour A210 media player along with TV and my Onkyo. In the past I tired with couple of low end router in primary - bridge mode to see if I can stream movie across the room. I was able to do 720p movie but never 1080p movies.

Finally I went ahead and invested in a high end router, one of my friend was traveling from US and I asked him to get Asus RT-AC66U. This one of the few routers with Wireless AC standard and even though the "N" version of this router would have been sufficient I went ahead and bought this to future proof my network.

I had a old Cisco Linksys WRT320N and I flashed it with DD-WRT firmware. I configured this router as Client Bridge to my Asus RT-AC66U. These both connect via Wireless N in 5ghz. WRT320N sits in my living room and all my devices - PCH A210, PS3 Blu ray player etc., connects to this router through Ethernet cables and my unRaid server and Asus router is in the another room. Both are separated by a wardrobe and a concrete wall and distance between them would be around 30 feet.

Now coming to fun part with this setup I was able to stream 1080p blu ray ISO and folder structure from my unRaid server to my PCH A210. This router is super fast , its able stream 1080p movie like its nothing. A full blu ray movie (40 GB+) starts within 10-20 secs and extra and menus removed movies (18-20gb) within 5-8 secs. I dare say the load time is faster than it was when the server and A210 was connected through cables in WRT320N. No mismatch in audio and video and fast forward , rewind works flawlessly. Jumping between chapters works great. This is as good as everything is connected via LAN cables. Wireless copy i was getting 20MB/s.I watched The Hobbit blu ray iso in this setup without a single problem.

All in all this router is great but it runs bit hot.It has tons of future like built in VPN, AiCloud etc., yet to explore them. Its a very costly option (Flipkart 17K) in India in US I got it for $193 but it solved my problem keeping a giant server in my living room.
 
How is the AC66 connected to the PC/unRaid server? Does your WAN also goes through this? I have the N66 and I am not able to configure it well till now. I am having my WAN also connected through it and already have a wired ADSL modem. I am thinking of ignoring WAN and using the router just to stream music/movies from my PC (DLNA/uPnP) to the living room. Unfortunately I am using just the 2.4GHz connection as the devices do not have the 5GHz connectivity. Was wondering would it help to do a setup like yours i.e. via a 5GHz access point.
 
My AC66 is in one the bedrooms in my apartment. This connects to a Airtel provided ADSL2 modem/Router , I have set this device in gateway mode and configured my AC66 with id/password etc., to connect to WAN. My unRAID server is connected via gigabyte port to the AC66.

I am not connecting all my devices in Living room to AC66 directly, the reason being they don't have powerful antennas to stream 1080p movies. So what i did is to take my old WRT320N router flashed with DD-WRT and connect to my AC66 as a wireless bridge. All the devices in my living room are connect via ethernet cables to this WRT320N. I feel wireless B/5Ghz would be better for this short distance with less interference...also with this setup all devices have internet connection as well....
 
I am having a fairly similar setup in my bedroom. N66 connected to my MTNL provided ADSL2 wired modem/router. The ADSL modem is in the bridge mode and I have options to dial from my PC or from N66. But the problem is at times the N66 is confused because I have two CAT5e connected from my ADSL router to N66 (one to WAN and other to LAN). The LAN wire is for times when I don't want to dial using N66 and use the PC dialer instead (I've set up auto connect/disconnect scripts for downloads).
 
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