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Recommendation for a wireless router

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nizx

New Around Here
Currently have and ASUS RT-AC68U but want to get rid of it, it broke after 2.5 months of use and ASUS took 3 months to get me a replacement unit. I know it is a good router but I really want to depart from that brand because of their poor service, anyone can recommend me a router that can serve specially 2 xbox one consoles without NAT problems and really use my fiber 200Mbps/200Mbps connection, for wireless AC is desired but not required as only Netflix and web browsing is done over wifi.
 
Currently have and ASUS RT-AC68U but want to get rid of it, it broke after 2.5 months of use and ASUS took 3 months to get me a replacement unit. I know it is a good router but I really want to depart from that brand because of their poor service, anyone can recommend me a router that can serve specially 2 xbox one consoles without NAT problems and really use my fiber 200Mbps/200Mbps connection, for wireless AC is desired but not required as only Netflix and web browsing is done over wifi.

Bad luck. Try another one. I don't think you'll find customer service much better from any vendor in consumerland.

I buy from Newegg.com - if it's in warranty and their return period, they send a replacement very quickly. Not many brick-and-mortor stores do this anymore.
 
Currently have and ASUS RT-AC68U but want to get rid of it, it broke after 2.5 months of use and ASUS took 3 months to get me a replacement unit. I know it is a good router but I really want to depart from that brand because of their poor service, anyone can recommend me a router that can serve specially 2 xbox one consoles without NAT problems and really use my fiber 200Mbps/200Mbps connection, for wireless AC is desired but not required as only Netflix and web browsing is done over wifi.

Well the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk has many fans here at SNB. Can be bought at brick and mortar or online.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Advisor
 
I'm pretty happy with both the Asus RT-AC68P and Netgear R7000. Liking RMerlin's firmware for the RT-AC68P. Not so much the stock firmware for the R7000, it's missing information that I expect to see...great piece of hardware though. I've used dd-wrt on the R7000, which works well and has a lot of monitoring capability. As well as tomato ARM on the R7000, which is currently somewhere between Alpha and Beta. While I really like the tomato web admin interface, my R7000 has a problem with random ping times, so I've not used it a lot.

Both of these routers provide good growth potential here, more bandwidth than I currently need, and cover my house fully on 5GHz. wireless band. Which is much better than relying on the 2.4GHz. band around here, it's too crowded.

In my opinion, you could pick either one of those, the RT-AC68P or R7000, and find what you're looking for.
 
If you are from Europe and not planning on using a different firmware then I would not recommend the R7000 at all.
 
Hi nizx. Customer service is a hurting dog these days, mostly irrespective of the class of product you're buying into; RMAs, end-user support, etc... As a service provider myself, it has become quite a challenge to provide quality primary care sustainably, as proven by just the stories I've heard in the last year alone, which would leave most people somewhere between dumbstruck, laughing and crying...

First option, as others have suggested, is jumping right back into a big-box products. The chances of 2 lemons in a row is very low *knock on wood*. As long as said unit and whatever firmware can route 200Mbps full-duplex with all desired services/features turned on, and do so below a temperature hot enough to melt the tiles off the space shuttle, you should be just fine. :)

Second option are the value enterprise-ish products, largely absent of much support from the OEM -- ie. Ubiquiti and MikroTik. Not much more needs to be said. If you can hack it with this stuff, then the thread doesn't need to go much further.

Then there are some SMB products that for a slightly higher purchase price tend to offer better reliability and way better support, but you'll have to give up some bleeding-edge features and a fair degree of "all-in-one"-ness, depending upon the vendor. For what it's worth, the integrated appliance vendors seems to do pretty well here -- Peplink, Zyxel, Cyberroam, etc. You'd be investing a bit more for a bit "less" on the product side, but without saying that the support will blow the socks off the big-box brands, well, I would say it. :)

Best of luck.
 
Last edited:
Consumer WiFi routers
Opinion alert
A) without competition there is no excellence
B) with too much competition, profits fall and vendors resort to bloat to pump up the margins. That's what we have with the crazy $200 routers.
 
I would say that over the past few years asus warranty has improved significantly. If you want better service you should contact someone higher up in asus, it usually helps and they respond much faster.

as for pricing of technology there are a number of interesting facts. If you look at intel CPU prices they've been constant every generation since pentium 4. Every CPU intel releases per generation is always priced the same as the last based on performance class(consumer high end is always about $300, consumer enthusiast $1000). Other vendors price their tech higher each generation than the last because the new stuff is more "valuable" than the last so that their old products still have value and people will still buy their new products regardless of how expensive.

If you want something reliable but without this pricing trend than go with something non-consumer. There are various wifi routers/access point brands/models meant solely for offices/businesses but you may need skill to use these.
 
Consumer WiFi routers
Opinion alert
A) without competition there is no excellence
B) with too much competition, profits fall and vendors resort to bloat to pump up the margins. That's what we have with the crazy $200 routers.

Completely agree here - we're at a point where it's tough for a consumer to make an appropriate value choice...

With Quantenna's 4 stream implementation (and spotty stability) and now we see X-Stream, it's a lot of spec candy that most clients can't support - anything more than a router with stable 802.11n 3 stream (N450) and 801.11ac (3 streams) is money spent doing nothing...

I know folks are probably going to some hating on me - but for the moment, I've found the Linksys/Belkin WT1900ac to be a very good choice, followed up closely with the Apple Airport Extreme AC - The WRT1900ac, once the firmware got stable is an exceptional performer, and the Airport AC, while not being as feature rich as some, is solid and stable, again with very good performance.

sfx
 
Well the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk has many fans here at SNB. Can be bought at brick and mortar or online.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Advisor


Currently running my R7000 gateway router flashed w/Shibby's latest tomato build v126.

This router more than fast enough to support decent throughput on the OpenVPN server it is configured for.
 
If you are from Europe and not planning on using a different firmware then I would not recommend the R7000 at all.

Why? I'm from Europe and it's working fine with default fw
 

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