Synology RT2600AC AC-2600 Wireless Dual-Band Gigabit Router

I work from home so Internet access is critically important to me. I have our networking gear on UPSes and both a cable modem and backup 4G option. I previously was using a Netgear mesh router that was had only limited device management options. I could set a schedule to turn Internet access on and off, but there was only a single schedule which would affect all devices on the WiFi network. In other words, if I wanted to keep my kids from surfing the web on their iPod at 3am, I also had to disable cloud backup of our Synology NAS. This device is much more flexible. I was able to set up several profiles and apply a schedule and web filtering to each one. The kids' devices profile shuts things down at bedtime and also has web filtering enabled. If they want access to a particular site that they think doesn't need to be filtered, they can request it via their browser and I get a notification, and I can make an exception for that site if I think it is OK. This has been extremely helpful in managing Internet access for a house full of kids who have access to different laptops, iPods, etc. This device has an option for failover of the primary upstream Internet connection. So I have a cable modem plugged into the WAN port. When it fails, as it often does, the Internet connection will automatically failover to the T-Mobile 4G Internet appliance I have plugged into the LAN 1 port. That's very helpful - our 4G signal isn't great and if there is an outage that affects a lot of people the cellular infrastructure is overloaded and so gets very slow, but at least we have enough Internet speed to report outages and get e-mail. It also means when the power goes out and the UPS is running down, I don't have to frantically unplug and rearrange cables. I can focus on grabbing our lanterns and reporting the outage. I took a star away for a few issues: (1) The strength of the mesh connection from the main floor to a MR2200AC downstairs is only Fair, and that's with careful aiming of the antennas. Our previous Netgear router with satellite maintained a much better connection between floors. This makes me wonder if I should have bought the more expensive RT6600 router, which costs twice as much. It did not seem like we should need that one to maintain a full-speed communication with a router that is one floor down and maybe 20 feet over, when the Netgear devices handled this fine. I will consider upgrading at some point. (2) the web GUI could be better-integrated. The router settings are spread across 3 apps. The third one, Safe Access, allows for the profiles and filtering and scheduling I mentioned. The other features seem somewhat arbitrarily split between Network Center and Wi-Fi Connect. There is not great integration between them. For example, in Network Center I set up DHCP reservations with device names and IP addresses for all the devices we use. When I'm setting up profiles, it would be nice if I could add devices to the profiles by browsing this list of devices. Instead, it just shows me the MAC addresses of devices which are online. In other words the devices have to be online, and you have to look up the Mac addresses themselves to determine which is which, to add them to the profiles. (3) there are some sharp edges in these tools which can cut you. I initially turned on MAC filtering, which for some reason is in the Wi-Fi Connect app rather than the Network Center app which has the DHCP configuration options. You do this by whitelist or blacklist. By default, it uses a blacklist. I switched it to a whitelist and put all our devices on a whitelist. But then later I wanted to temporarily turn the filtering off. I guess the right way to do this is to switch it to blacklist, with an empty list. While looking for a disable option I accidentally deleted the whitelist entry for the computer I was using to configure the router. The web GUI happily let me do that without a warning. Now, this was a mistake on my part, but friendly GUIs should try to help you avoid mistakes like this. I've been working with computers since the seventies and I made this mistake. I think that less-experienced users are likely to come across other sharp edges that I avoided. I had to hard-reset the router to recover from this. It would be nice if (a) there was a global enable/disable MAC filtering feature and (b) if the GUI would warn you if you were about to disable your own active connection! So this is a user-friendly device but only until you make a mistake. Would buy again, but if I had known the signal strength would be an issue, I might have bought the RT6600 first.

This router has a good connection speed and advanced administrative features like RADIUS. Admin panel is easy to use so got it up and running fast.

We have used Synology products for over ten years (and currently have three NASs) and decided to switch to their RT6600AX for our gateway. We purchased the RT2600AC to have a mesh network. The RT2600AC (and RT6600AX) are typical Synology quality. Their devices are robust, extremely reliable, and easy to manage. The interface on their Synology Router Management (SRM) is very well-designed. It is extremely easy to set up VLANs, wireless access points, users, and to isolate network traffic with firewall rules. I only had one issue setting up the RT2600AC as a mesh router. The router needs the latest version of SRM 1.3 to work in a mesh setup. Thus I needed to set up the router, update SRM, reset the router, and restart. Upon restart it automatically detected the RT6600AX and allowed it to be used in the mesh network.

I've installed at least 20 of these across my client base. Every single one of them has been rock-solid. Also love the user interface. Be aware that the built-in VPN is slow. It works, but it's slow to connect. Hoping the RT6600 is better in that regard.

We've had the router kit a couple of weeks and everything is running smoothly. I miss the feature to provide daily speed reports from my google on hub router but otherwise satisfied.

There's so much good to say about this Synology Router Kit and I have said it in other places. The greatest parts this system works in harmony and is a good solution for a big home or small business system. The software makes controlling user access and content restrictions really easy and it is powerful. But here is what would take this system to the next level: - Update to the latest Wi-FI 6 Standard (this is coming for the router with a new model later in 2022) - Make the Mesh parts able to work with POE (Power over Ethernet) so they don't require a separate power brick - Better mounting options for the Mesh part so it can easily be hung on a wall or from a ceiling None of these things are deal killers but they do factor in if you care about the overall implementation in the best way possible. To get that level of integration, you will need to look towards something like the Ubiquiti UniFi system but that system is overkill for most home and small business situations. As is, this mesh router working in conjunction with the RT 2600 AC is the best way to get close to a robust business level wi-fi application in a reasonable and affordable package.