Router recommendations

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dclegg

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#177919 19-Aug-2015 10:03

I'm having quite a few reliability issues with my current router (Airport Extreme), and am thinking it may be time for an upgrade.

I'm looking for a router with strong wifi coverage, and at least 4 Gigabit LAN ports. It will also need to play nicely with my current Draytek Vigor 120 ADSL modem, but will eventually be used with VDSL and UFB (provided the router is still useful by the time Chorus gets to us).

We stream a lot of video, and have multiple wifi connections at any given moment, so it must be able to handle that nicely.

Reliability and robustness is my primary concern, but I don't have an unlimited budget. It would be nice if I can keep it well under this side of $500.

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#1369110 19-Aug-2015 10:20

Netgear R7000,

We have one in our office, and it works great. I've never noticed it going down, its had plenty of firmware updates, VLAN for UFB is very easy to set up, Wifi is fast and range is good.

For your budget you could buy two and have one as an AP on the other side of the house.

sbiddle

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#1369145 19-Aug-2015 10:27

Netcom NF8AC is the best value for money IMHO.

"Strong WiFi" is also a bit of fallacy these days, especially since 5Ghz is so important and won't cover anywhere near the same footprint of 2.4Ghz

I'd go as far these days as suggesting that unless an AP is mounted in the roof space providing good downwards coverage of the home, that the days of expecting a single AP/router to provide good coverage and throughput throughout an average size home with the 10+ devices that many people have are well and truly over.

dclegg

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#1369153 19-Aug-2015 10:37

sbiddle: Netcom NF8AC is the best value for money IMHO.

That's a modem/router though, right?

I already have a standalone modem, so was ideally looking for a router only. Although I'm not adverse to going with this if it makes sense to do so (and you do know your stuff :-))

"Strong WiFi" is also a bit of fallacy these days, especially since 5Ghz is so important and won't cover anywhere near the same footprint of 2.4Ghz

I'd go as far these days as suggesting that unless an AP is mounted in the roof space providing good downwards coverage of the home, that the days of expecting a single AP/router to provide good coverage and throughput throughout an average size home with the 10+ devices that many people have are well and truly over.

Yeah, I get the challenges there. Our 2.4Ghz is pretty much useless for us now, and our 5Ghz has crappy range. But if there is a device that can boost our 5Ghz coverage even just a little bit, we'll be winning over our current router. It sits on the floor above, and around 8 metres away from, our lounge. And 5 Ghz coverage there is patchy.

But my real problem is the stability of our current one. Get a few reboots a day, and being an Apple I get next to no insight into what is actually going on with it.

dclegg

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#1369159 19-Aug-2015 10:43

Related question: Are AlphaCity good to deal with? Many of the routers I'm considering are there with really competitive prices (in fact, prices so low sometimes that I'm a little suspicious).

macuser

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#1369171 19-Aug-2015 10:54

dclegg: Related question: Are AlphaCity good to deal with? Many of the routers I'm considering are there with really competitive prices (in fact, prices so low sometimes that I'm a little suspicious).

Yea they're all good, bought an Intel 7260 AC wireless card from them and it arrived overnight no issues.

sbiddle

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#1369173 19-Aug-2015 10:58

dclegg:
sbiddle: Netcom NF8AC is the best value for money IMHO.

That's a modem/router though, right?

I already have a standalone modem, so was ideally looking for a router only. Although I'm not adverse to going with this if it makes sense to do so (and you do know your stuff :-))

Pretty much everything mass market out there on the market is now combined xDSL/Ethernet

dclegg

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#1369177 19-Aug-2015 11:07

Currently leaning towards the ASUS RT-AC68U, after recommendations from a couple of friends of mine in the US who have them.

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ghettomaster

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#1369180 19-Aug-2015 11:15

dclegg: Related question: Are AlphaCity good to deal with? Many of the routers I'm considering are there with really competitive prices (in fact, prices so low sometimes that I'm a little suspicious).

AlphaCity are excellent to deal with. If they're not far off the cheapest on pricespy, I'll go with them every time.

dclegg

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#1370284 19-Aug-2015 14:14

I pulled the trigger on the ASUS router from MightyApe. They price matched it down to $329 for me :-)

sultanoswing

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#1370628 19-Aug-2015 23:29

I got the Asus rt-ac68u just a few weeks ago to update my network in preparation for fibre. Flashed with Merlin it's a nice, capable, extensible consumer@home router/switch/AP. Plus, you get USB/NAS/printer sharing.

Wifi range is good, but don't forget that your client wifi devices still need to be able to connect/talk back to the asus, or you'll look like you have great signal, but it won't connect.

That said, as I run an openVPN server, I'm planning to use the asus as a simple AP once I get some cat 6 laid, and my pfsense box running :)

jonathan18

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#1371341 21-Aug-2015 10:01

I'm in a similar boat, in that the wireless component of our current router has started playing up quite badly over the past couple of months (dropping the connections of various devices, erratic/rubbish speed...) and I've had no luck in solving these problems on anything other than a short-term basis.

I've looked at the suggestions above, and thus far the Netcom NF8AC is the cheapest of the recommended models ($208), but are there any models anyone could advise that are a decent amount cheaper, including ones that may be easy to pick up second-hand (eg, provided by ISPs)?

It is solely to be used at the end of an ethernet run at the other end of the house from the modem/router to provide wired connections to various devices (Fire TV, Squeezebox etc) and extend the wireless coverage through that end of the house, so won't even act as a DHCP server.

I need/want 5GHz and gigabit ethernet but TBH don't care too much about AC as we have no devices that use this.

Any other (cheaper) units that users can recommend?

Many thanks in advance.

(edit - grammar)

lxsw20

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#1371345 21-Aug-2015 10:07

Spark HG659b.

trig42

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#1371361 21-Aug-2015 10:35

I have just changed to an R7000, pretty happy with it.
Wireless has no issues, I have moved the deives that can do 5GHz over to that, leaving the old 2.4GHz devices with a bit less clutter.

The Asus looks like a nice unit also.

jonathan18

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#1371389 21-Aug-2015 10:58

lxsw20: Spark HG659b.

Thanks for this. This unit looks very similar to the Vodafone-supplied unit my parents have - are they otherwise interchangable?

As it happens, my parents switched over to fibre and got sent another identical modem/router (Voda call centre staff wouldn't believe me that their current unit was fibre-ready, despite it having been used for fibre at their last house!), so their old one's collecting dust somewhere. So this wouldn't be just a cheap option but totally free as I know they don't need/want it. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier!

So this would work fine used as a router/wireless access point? (eg, I could easily switch of DHCP)?

I do recall one issue with theirs which is getting manual DNS settings to stick - I had to get admin access to the settings to acheive this stickiness - but for my purposes I'm assuming this kind of thing won't be an issue (as DNS settings are in our Fritzbox).

lxsw20

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#1371444 21-Aug-2015 11:14

The Vodafone one is the HG659, which had firmware issues, you will find if you do a search on here. Apparently new firmware has fixed this. If not you can flash onto the Spark firmware.

IF you're using it as a router why would you switch off DHCP?

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