So I've modded many routers in the past with custom firmware and cases and antenna's and even some excessive radio/ram/cpu surgery. I do like my rigged little routers but I think it's time to join the future, and I think the future is these Mikrotik Router Board's

So my whole deal is I want to spec out a router that meets my demands and the parts for it, here's where it gets tricky

I needs to have the following specifications
-Gigabit Lan
-Minimum of 2 Lan ports and 1 Wan
-Must have Dual band(2.4ghz and 5ghz)
-I'd like to use very high gain antenna's, I live in a HUGE 4 Story 8k Sqft home and I'd rather just have an overkill AP than use repeaters for now(I also want my neighbors to know how epic I am)
-It has to have a decent CPU to handle ALOT of traffic, especially on the GIGABIT side with my workstations and storage arrays doing massive gigabit speed servers(I've hit the cap of gigabit, measured around 115-120MB/s)
-I'd like the chassis to have 4 External Antenna's(2 for 2.4Ghz and 2 for 5Ghz) However, I could do 3 Antenna's with 1 for 2.4Ghz and 2 for 5Ghz)

With this In mind so far I found 3 models that matched what I wanted
RB800G
RB493G
RB433G

And for Wireless cards I found the following
R52H (I can use one for 2.4Ghz and another for 5Ghz)
R2SHPn (I wanted it to be overkill, I think this fits the bill hahaha)
Ubiquiti XR9(I'm curious about these 900mhz cards, and with three mPCI, maybe? Haha)

And if anyone has feedback for antenna's(I realize most enclosures externally use the N type connector so I found some 9dbi N type antenna's)

I hope I don't sound like complete stupid

Do you really need to route at gigabit speeds, or do you just need wirespeed switching for the internal network? There's plenty of cheap options that might suit you if that's the case.
I wouldn't recommend having a single high power access point - while it may have a long range, WiFi is bidirectional, and your computers and phones won't be able to communicate with it at the edges of the house. Worse still, because of the long range, you'll have to deal with lots of interference.

If you don't have cabling in the house, you could consider powerline adaptors (not ideal, but quick and easy). I've had bad experiences every time I've tried to use repeaters.

If cabling is a possibility, I'd use a couple of wAP ac's spaced around the house. For the router, depends on your Internet connection really. Maybe an RB3011? If you have high speed fibre you might want to look at the Cloud Core range.

If you want to build things yourself, nothing stopping you doing that, but keep the design constraints in mind.

My ISP provides speeds of around 325Mb/s Down and 290Mb/s Up, so beyond that and the fact I all the time max out the gigabit side with the workstations and such, It's very crucial to keep GB speeds

My experience with repeaters was very bad too, AP Roaming isn't very good yet and thats a shame. So I'm stuck with wiring constraints

Biggest issue is I have only the first 2 levels with LAN, the upper levels don't have provisions to connect, so it's not possible to get cords up there, and the amount of runs I'd need are sad. I was trying to make the best of things, the Wifi needs to work at acceptable speeds when in use and only is powering laptops, and hopefully not to many at a time. Mostly for streaming video and internet work. (I can't take my work laptop around the home while on lan), and all the kids laptops for homework.

I'm familiar with my interference issue, but to my luck we have no one near by with a strong router and channel 6 is currently unused(neighbors are on 1 and 11 from my last scan) So the 2.4Ghz will work great on 6 and also no one near by uses 5Ghz(that I can see and my Laptops got some decent pickup). So I thought the above setup would work out rather nicely. I'm aware wifi is bi-directional(and therefore half duplex) so it wouldn't have very much throughput especially once everyone gets on, but i figured if my stupid modified Broadcom modem with a 75mw radio and internal antennas can reach from the second level to the third(it gets to the fourth but is very spotty) that a higher powered external antenna would do even better. But I'm not an expert

Also about the powerline, we have ALOT of equipment that causes feedback and with the massive whole house surge protector and the fact our home is split phase, we haven't been able to make powerline adapters work because.... yeah, either it can't reach or the interference is huge. That and alot of the equipment passes through UPS's.

Sorry for the long post. I think it would be okay with a high powered AP and a decent high powered N side for me to use when I need it. I just don't know these mikrotik boards very well so idk what can handle 50-80 clients(most are LAN servers, printers, workstations, few laptops and Remote Displays), handle internal gigabit speeds at full gigabit and do all the basics router functions while holding dual bands and also not crashing every day(I love you Realtek...). This RB800 looks nice(and I have someone who offered it to me for a decent low price, in a case, just no cards)

My biggest thing was Idk what antennas to use indoor for high gain applications(and ofc it'll take some fiddling to find the right output power to get the best SNR)

I needs to have the following specifications
-Gigabit Lan
-Minimum of 2 Lan ports and 1 Wan
-Must have Dual band(2.4ghz and 5ghz)
-I'd like to use very high gain antenna's, I live in a HUGE 4 Story 8k Sqft home and I'd rather just have an overkill AP than use repeaters for now(I also want my neighbors to know how epic I am)
-It has to have a decent CPU to handle ALOT of traffic, especially on the GIGABIT side with my workstations and storage arrays doing massive gigabit speed servers(I've hit the cap of gigabit, measured around 115-120MB/s)
-I'd like the chassis to have 4 External Antenna's(2 for 2.4Ghz and 2 for 5Ghz) However, I could do 3 Antenna's with 1 for 2.4Ghz and 2 for 5Ghz)

I've read rapidly your needs, and I think that the "hAP ac" could be a good fit (maybe not exactly).
It's an "plug-n-plug" device (without any step of assemble any wireless pci-e cards), so more simple, but yet powerfull device.

NB: you might need to forget your need of external antenna, and just test it (with its internal antenna) to see if coverage is good for your use-case.

That's going to be hard to cover with an single AP.

Do you have coax runs to some convenient locations? You could install a MOCA2.0 bonded network as your distribution to several APs.
The Actiontec ECB6200 looks pretty good to me, but I've never had my hands on one so I can't personally speak to how well they work, but reviews seem positive from what I've read.

You could put three or more of these in your home, and run CapsMan with several smaller APs, which would be much better than a central, high power "uber" radio.
As others have stated, the problem is not covering the place with RF from your mighty router - it's getting the signal BACK to the router from your devices which don't transmit at a similarly high power.

4xx mipsbe can be on edge of performance with 512 bytes packets and weak on small. (if most of traffic is torrent uTP).
High routing performance and flexible Wireless is hard to meet in one piece of iron.

RB800 can be good solution.
It have high performance enough CPU (really can pretend to near gigabit routing). 4 miniPCI and 1 mini PCI-e sloth for wireless.
So R11e-5HacT for 5 GHz wireless (it ac, but main feature is MIMO 3x3)
I not recommend SHp (Super High Power ) Wireless for Home AP. Better to gain both power and sensitivity with antennas.
Anyway for AP is better to lover power to about 20 dBm or less.
And R52HnD for 2.4 GHz

Use MMCX-N pigtail ACMMCX or MMCX-RPSMA or MMCX-SMA according with chosen antenna.

I have very good feedback about aitMAX omni antennas on AP. But it HUGE, MIMO2x2
And for Your case too narrow (make good coverage only on floor where installed)

PS.
900 MHz is not compatible with Standard Wi-Fi. It operator only solution.

Thankyou everyone for your replies. So it sounds like it's best to do mid power cards, and I'll take a look at those AP's. I was leaning for the RB800 granted I have never done antennas like this before.

I'll peak at the other AP you mention.

About COAX, We have some coax on the third level but it currently is on a separate circuit from the first level(all the coax meets at the junction box outside and there is two separate connections, I assume previous owner made this home a multi family unit and separated the top and bottom cable service) So Im not sure I could utilize it without doing some serious service to the Junction box. Not that i can't but I'd rather a easier solution, especially if we move in the future, I'd like to have a smaller pick it up and go.

If I do use the RB800, would just twin R52H's work, one set to N and one set to G?

Is there better radio's I do not know of(like some of those DBii radios or such)

I've heard these miktrotik routers have crazy output power even on internal antennas, I'd just like the externals if possible




I'm aware that 900mhz currently isn't standard at all(wireless ah is undergoing finalization this year) but was just a question since it intrigued me when i saw one, just looked like fun to tinker with

I probably sound like the biggest noob here >.> greetings though, Happy to be here where the routers aren't crippled junk.

EDIT: That R11e-5HacT Looks very nice!, The RB800 Enclosure I was peaking at has 4 N-Type holes for connection, This radio uses three of the four, My G band would have only One External antenna? Does anyone make Internal Antenna's to put inside enclosures(I don't imagine it could be good inside these metal enclosures?)

I figured, haha, I just recalled someone mentioning internal antennas', i assume there is plastic enclosures too

hAP ac will only do about 290Mbps w/ 1500bytes packets with sfq, and you need (350+290 == 640Mbps)

Usually people would use fasttrack with hAP ac, but if you're maxing out your upload/download all the time, it makes sense to enable some kind of queueing which means no fasttrack.

I think RB3011 might be a better choice for the routing, or if you could get your hands on a fanless x86 braswell board it might work well.

wap ac / hap ac for wifi -- probably won't get more than 350mbps 2x2 / 500mbps 3x3 but at least it's less buggy than other faster chipsets, or other software on the same chipset

Use CCR1009-8S-1S+ for routing, and CRS226 for switching. Link them via SFP+, and run dedicated WAPs instead of something built in. The new wAP AC's look pretty nice and will provide you a much more flexible installation, better wireless coverage, and great speeds throughout the house.

You'd better devote the appropiate device to each task. You asked for overkill so money is no object, right?

Router: CCR1009

Switch: CRS125 (SFP 1G) or CRS226 (SFP+ 10G)

APs: As you cannot use wire, a possible solution would be using 2 Hap acs; these are double radio APs, ac triple chain, so you can run wire to one of the Hap ac, then "link" one of its radios (5GHz for example) wirelessly (nstreme or NV2) to the other one (strategically placed on levels 3 or 4).

That is, both Haps would be linked by their 5GHz radio, effectively having a "dedicated" wireless link, providing wireless coverage using their 2,4GHz radio.

That will additionaly provide you flexibility to relocate the upstairs Hap to an optimal place, where all devices have good coverage (limiting factor being mobile devices talking to the AP) and both Haps link optimally by 5GHz.

Additionaly by using this approach you'll have 5 ethernet ports on the upper level Hap available to connect more devices, so you can further optimize your network by "moving" from wireless to wiring suitable devices (printers, Apple TV and the like) to the upper Hap.

Similarly, you could deploy a third or fourth Hap ac, linking them by 5GHz to the wired one.

If you want to lower the overkill factor, the remote APs could be Hap ac lite too if the "remote" needs are lower (single chain 5GHz, no gigabit ether ports)

If you are really interested in building a very powerful Mikrotik setup at home, take a look at this video and read through this article (hAP AC review and how to get great wireless in your home). It should give you a good idea of the heading I'm going in and what hardware to use!

Design wise you're much better off using multiple access-points spread out through the house then one big one, it would only give you headaches. The new wAP AC series is perfectly suited to spread around the house and blanked every area in the house with the highest speeds! More faster and stable then any single access-point could ever do (no matter how many antenna's or gain it has).