Don’t buy a router until you read this: making the case for ASUS extendable routers

My family and I are in a bit of an unusual internet usage situation. We live somewhere extremely rural—dirt roads going between mountains covered in hundreds of acres of nothing but trees levels of rural—but we have somehow managed to luck our way into having reliable, fast broadband internet connectivity despite our relative isolation out here in the woods. High speed access means little, however, if my router can not provide the coverage I need to move around my home and property.

I work from home as a writer, but I also enjoy hobby-farming and gardening so I’m frequently outside. Cell phone service isn’t even a thing out here in the mountains, and so I rely heavily on my home WiFi network to keep in touch both in my home and out on my farm. For far too long I had to worry about missing an important message from family or a work call if I strayed too far from my home router, but an extendable network of routers ended up being the solution to my need for sprawling connectivity.

What is an extendable router?

To make a long answer short, an extendable network is a series of routers scattered throughout your home (or in my case, the farm!) that provide a wider array of WiFi coverage than a standalone router can. The traditional method of dealing with the need for extended WiFi coverage involved using a regular router paired with one or more WiFi extenders. These extenders came with a downfall, however, as they required your device to disconnect from one router or extender in order to connect with another. In today’s world of FaceTime, content streaming and remote work that kind of disruption isn’t really acceptable anymore.