New house = new network project. I've just bought some excellent (sounding at least) Cambium access points, and am now looking at a new router to drive them and the network.

I have decided to go in with both feet, studs up, and totally uberkill the network. At the same time, I am keen to learn something new. From reading the forums, Mikrotiks and EdgeRouters seem to be the not-for-the-fainthearted poison of choice. Each seem to have their own aficionados, but from what I can tell either will be excellent and offer lots and lots of functionality and customisations.

I have learned my lesson (the hard way) about evaluating options like this. My typical MO is to analyse every statistic and function of all options and pick whichever one has the (usually marginal) technical superiority over the others. That has also usually led me to pick the non-mainstream option that results in a technological dead-end or absolutely no support.

I am not a systems/network ICT guru, so won't be taking to this naturally, but I am pretty good at figuring out what I want to do, Google-fu-ing how to do it, then following the resulting instructions. So am keen to see how many other Geekzoners use each option, and any thoughts about which has better/more set up guides and online support. Or is easier to use (though I'm not afraid of a CLI).

Initially this will be on a Vodafone HFC Cable connection. But in Island Bay, so may need to be switched to VDSL if those issues aren't resolved. Fibre isn't coming until 2019 last I checked, but I would hope with this level over overkill not to have to replace everything in 3 years.

I already have a really good Linksys Nighthawk running AdvancedTomato (thanks @michaelmurfy) that I will most definitely be keeping as backup until I am sure everything is working properly.