Recommend me a new Router

Nah, no plans to get a landline. I may not have convinced my wife to completely cut TV, but I at least convinced her to cut the phone.

Got internet installed today, and did a quick and dirty setup on the router. I set the 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz to the same SSID. Is that the right call, or do I want them on different SSIDs? I've never had a modem that used both, so I don't know.

Did a few speed tests on it. Direct wired to the router got me around 106 mbps download, wireless in the same room was around 60 mbps, wireless at the other end of the house (through several walls) was around 30 mbps, and powerline networked was about 60 mbps again. Hopefully the powerline speed will be enough for Steam streaming. I don't have my desktop over here to test it out yet.

Chaz wrote:

I set the 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz to the same SSID. Is that the right call, or do I want them on different SSIDs? I've never had a modem that used both, so I don't know.

Yeah, set them both to the same SSID unless you want to manually force having separated 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels. The firmware will automatically shift traffic to whichever band will be most ideal. Unless you choose otherwise, it'll also automatically shift channels too.

If you log into the router, you can even watch how all your devices are using the network graphed in real-time. It's kinda cool.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Chaz wrote:

I set the 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz to the same SSID. Is that the right call, or do I want them on different SSIDs? I've never had a modem that used both, so I don't know.

Yeah, set them both to the same SSID unless you want to manually force having separated 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels. The firmware will automatically shift traffic to whichever band will be most ideal. Unless you choose otherwise, it'll also automatically shift channels too.

If you log into the router, you can even watch how all your devices are using the network graphed in real-time. It's kinda cool.

Cool, that's what I figured. I love having a router with a bunch of features to play with and a good interface for playing with them. After I get settled, maybe I'll even set up a guest network, just for funsies.

The guest network feature is easy to turn on and off. I don't know if having it always on reduced performance on your main network at all when not in use. I imagine it doesn't, but I never bothered to look into it.

I'm pretty sure we'll hardly use it, if at all. Sounds like it just lets you grant that network access to the internet but not the local network devices. Frankly, if someone's in my house, and I can't trust them not to poke around in my devices, I probably shouldn't invite them to the house.

A week late and a dollar short with a few opinions:

I set mine to different SSIDs (WolfStar76 and WolfStar76-G), just because I like being able to see which of my devices are on which of my radios. That's just the kind of nerd I am. This has helped to occasionally spot when my router is getting ready to require a reboot, because one or the other of my networks will start to be flaky, while the other will still perform okay (until 1-8 hours later when it inevitably dies too). Your Mileage May Vary.

Chaz wrote:

I'm pretty sure we'll hardly use it, if at all. Sounds like it just lets you grant that network access to the internet but not the local network devices. Frankly, if someone's in my house, and I can't trust them not to poke around in my devices, I probably shouldn't invite them to the house.

I think it's more for people who like to have guest wifi on all the time. When I first got my router with guest network options, I left the guest wifi on 24/7, just to see who, if anyone would use it (no password was set for this test). It didn't take long (a week to 10 days?) for a pair of iPads to show up on my network - constantly. Not sure who, exactly it was, but I live in a fairly wifi-dense neighborhood, so any of my neighbors could have done it - deliberately or not.

Now I use the NetGear Genie app on my phone to toggle guest wifi in and off as needed - with the added bonus that I can tell it how long to leave the guest network open for, before it shuts it back off again. Pretty handy feature.

Arise thread!
I need a second router for some additional coverage in the back of my house. My main router is an rt-n66u (which I love).
I'd prefer something a bit smaller and less expensive. Any suggestions?

I'm currently looking into getting a new router because my current one is failing connect every few days making me have to unplug and plug it back in.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

I'm currently looking into getting a new router because my current one is failing connect every few days making me have to unplug and plug it back in.

Sounds about right...

I ended up getting a TP Link Archer C7 AC1750. Had it for about a month. So far I haven't had any connection issues. Also fixed a problem I found out about just before I bought it. My old router was capped at 100Mbs so was pretty slow. This one is 1000Mbs and is much faster.

Price was around $60 during a sell.

I need a new wireless router as I have an old single band N router and the wifi around my small house has gotten so bad that less than 30 feet away I keep losing signal and webpages will not load on my phone most of the time. I got wifi analyzer on my phone and saw that effectively there is nothing completely free from channel 1-11 (it says 14 is free, but that's not currently an option in my router). I'm a networking dummy so I'm not going to be using many features that require much knowledge, I know enough to get into set page, look up how to forward ports (since I typically forget) and change a few settings. Not much else.

Baron - how's the TP Link working out for you?

The TP Link Baron got runs about half the price of the Asus RT-AC68U, then there's the Asus ASUS RT-AC66U, which is an older model and sits in the middle. Is the AC68U really going to be worth twice the price for me?

I will be rearranging my house soon where right now the router is on one end of the house in the living room, but will be putting it in a small bedroom on the front side of the house, but about the mid-point. Due to the layout, there will be just as many walls in the way, and at more of an angle in many places. I may end up having to put the consoles on wifi if I don't go up in the attic and drop a cable down the exterior wall to behind the TV like I planned.

Any other recommendations?

If you're willing to spend the money and want only one router I'd get a Neatgear Nighthawk. They're reputed to fare exceptionally well in areas where there's a lot of competing signals.

Or if you happen to be a T Mobile customer you can get a Asus AC1900 for free from them. Ours works really well.

Read some reviews, and since prices are about equal and the netgear is in stock with prime shipping, I'm going with that. Thanks!

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Baron - how's the TP Link working out for you?

I had no real issues. My only problem is my wireless headphones will drop connection every now and then with the wireless on. The good thing is I can turn wireless off with a switch on the back of the router. I haven't had to reboot it once. I had no drop connections from any of my devices.

Here's a semi-router-related question. I have my router set up in the basement at one end of the house. Our master bedroom is up two floors, at the other end of the house. The router signal gets there, but it's kind of weak. A while ago, I followed some guide I found to set up my old WRT54g as a network extender, and connected it via powerline. It was just an experiment, so I followed the guide's suggestions of setting it up with a different name (NETWORKNAME-Extender or something) and no password. Then I didn't wind up using it.

But, with a kid on the way, it's probably likely that we'll be spending more time up there, since that's also where the nursery will be, so I'd like to get the extender set up right. What I noticed when I had it up was that devices didn't like to switch over to it, since they could still get a weak signal from the main router.

So how should I set this up? Keep the network name different, but put a password on? Or is there a way to configure it to be identical to the main network, just coming out of the other router?

Use the same network name, frequency set to "auto". The access points shouldn't act as DHCP servers but their settings should otherwise be identical. Devices still may not intelligently switch between them though. With my laptop, for instance, if I walk across the house it will continue talking to the far access point, and I have to turn wifi off/on to get it to switch to the close one. The behavior depends on the quality of the networking stack on each device.

I got some Eero 3 pack's and deployed them at a few homes with great success..

https://www.eero.com/

It's a take on the Ruckus (and others) mesh network minus the dedicated hardware controller. So far results have been really promising in providing blanket coverage to some pretty large homes.

Disable the wifi on your home router and then plug these around the house and they will essentially auto configure themselves to cover your home. They work pretty good without ethernet (obviously work even better wired) at extending your wifi throughout the house past the initial wired unit at the router.

I got some Eero 3 pack's and deployed them at a few homes with great success..

https://www.eero.com/

It's a take on the Ruckus (and others) mesh network minus the dedicated hardware controller. So far results have been really promising in providing blanket coverage to some pretty large homes.

Disable the wifi on your home router and then plug these around the house and they will essentially auto configure themselves to cover your home. They work pretty good without ethernet (obviously work even better wired) at extending your wifi throughout the house past the initial wired unit at the router.

So, my router is on it's last legs, as I find myself having to unplug it about once a week or so as it loses signal completely.

I asked in Slack for a good replacement and got the following recommendations:

ASUS Dual-band Wireless AC1200 Gigabit Router (RT-AC55U)

Asus Dual-Band Wireless-N600 Gigabit Router (RT-N56U)

Mikrotik Routerboard RB2011UiAS-2HnD-IN Sfp Port plus 10 Port Ethernet

I also got a suggestion for these wifi extenders, which would make my wife a lot happier, as her favourite chair has lots of walls and a fridge between her and our current router:

NETGEAR N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender - Wall Plug Version (WN3000RP)

Baron Of Hell wrote:

I ended up getting a TP Link Archer C7 AC1750. Had it for about a month. So far I haven't had any connection issues. Also fixed a problem I found out about just before I bought it. My old router was capped at 100Mbs so was pretty slow. This one is 1000Mbs and is much faster.

Price was around $60 during a sell.

I snagged an Archer C9 off Amazon for ~$100. Installed DD-WRT on it and I'm quite pleased.

I've been experimenting with having a router that is always VPNed (the C9), and then a regular router for everything else. The C9 is fast enough that my VPN speeds and non-VPN speeds are very, very close (on cheaper/slower routers it was barely 1/3 to 1/2).

Even thought about replacing my vanilla router with a C9, although the simplicity of OnHub type stuff intrigues me.

So Amazon.ca has the NETGEAR AC1900 Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router (R7000) for $200, which is about $120 off the regular price.

Is this a good deal?

It occasionally dips below $170 (USD) on Amazon according to camelcamelcamel so that sounds like a good deal. I've been happy with mine that I got at $172 (USD), and so has a friend who actually knows what he's doing.

So I pulled the trigger on it sunday night.

Showed up Tuesday afternoon and took about 15 minutes to set up, and that is including the time waiting for the modem and then the router to power up completely before heading to the next step.

The setup was pretty good, even though I had to reload the setup screen once when it froze looking for an update. Beyond that, holy crap was it nice. For as much money as they put into the hardware (which looks awesome) they also spent a fair amount of money on the setup and administration screens.

mudbunny wrote:

So I pulled the trigger on it sunday night.

Showed up Tuesday afternoon and took about 15 minutes to set up, and that is including the time waiting for the modem and then the router to power up completely before heading to the next step.

The setup was pretty good, even though I had to reload the setup screen once when it froze looking for an update. Beyond that, holy crap was it nice. For as much money as they put into the hardware (which looks awesome) they also spent a fair amount of money on the setup and administration screens.

Just got this router as well. DELL had a deal for the router, 3TB USB HD, and a $100 DELL card for $240. Mine was a little more difficult to setup and I had to call Netgear. My issue was that I have a Comcast gateway due to needing landline phones in the house. I had to apparently put it in bridge mode, then tell the router to use the MAC address of the laptop I had connected to it. I don't know that I would have ever figured that out on my own but whatever

The reason for me upgrading was 2-fold. 1st, I wanted a HD hooked up to the network rather than on my PC. My Samsung SmartTV now sees the router HD and I can connect to it as a source to play any movies/music I have stored. 2nd, I kept getting disconnected when playing any Blizzard game. I could be on voice chat no problems, I could play other games for hours on end, it was just Blizzard games. I'm not sure the router was the issue but trying it anyway. I'll test if it worked when the next season of D3 starts.

We upgraded because the old one was, despite a factory reset and a couple of checks of the line by our ISP, still giving problems and requiring a reset every couple of days.

After a long, tiring go-round today with my ISP tech support, I have finally decided to buy my own cable modem, DOCSIS 3.0. The issue at hand is I need a non-wifi cable modem/router as I have two network segments. So at least two Ethernet ports are needed. I already have a sweet wifi router (Asus RT-N66U) that I do not want to get rid of. My Googling has revealed a number of cable modem/routers with baked in wifi, and modems with only one Ethernet port. But not exactly what I need. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Generally speaking, there's two kinds of modems you'll find: single function modems, or all-in-one modem/router/access point boxes. I'd stick with single-function modems, which are only going to have a single port, as their job is to convert the incoming cable signal into something another networking device can then use down the line, and vice versa.

If you truly need to split the signal into two separate wired networks, then your looking for some pro-level devices (router or switch) that will give you more control at a port-by-port level. At the hobbyist level, you'd still need a 2nd router, plugged into the first with some specific settings configured, to create a 2nd LAN network. Then there's still a chance of devices on the 2nd network being able to see devices on the 1st, and you're going to have a hell of a time dealing with any potential NAT issues if you want to game between the two networks.

As for modem recommendations, I've been using a DOCSIS 3.0 Motorola Surfboard 60xx for ever, and have had zero issues with it. The Wirecutter recommends either the 6183 for high-speed plans, or 6141 for "regular" plans, and I'd follow along with them.

My previous layout was an ISP-provided modem, which went to a Sonicwall 4-port vpn/router/firewall, to which I connected everything else (wifi router and a switch). The Sonicwall box is work-related and allows me to vpn into company servers. I do not administrate that box. And that was all well and good until we switched to 100 mbps cable service. The Sonicwall firewall throughput caps at 30 mbps. I had to separate it out in order to get 100 mbps on everything else.

My ISP provides a modem/router that has four Ethernet ports. I connected the Sonicwall and my Asus router into separate ports. And this is where I got sideways with my ISP. Bottom line is that they want to double my "modem fee" to cover what they call "home networking". Without it, only one of the four Ethernet ports on the ISP modem are active. For now I have consented to the fee, until I can replace the modem.

Thanks for the detailed and quick response!