Router advice for a small home with fiber internet

[HungryPillow]

Hey everyone,

I think it's about time to upgrade my current aging router and was looking for some advice from the experts here. My home is about 900 sq. ft. and I'm currently using an Asus RT-N66U... would like to upgrade to one of the many available AC offerings as all my wireless devices support AC wireless but my router does not. I looked at the Netgear X4S which seems good, but I am open to any suggestions. Brand and budget does not matter, but of course I don't want to pay for something I won't have any use for.

My current setup is as follows:

- 2 PCs, 1 PS4, 1 QNAP NAS connected via ethernet cable to the router
- 2 phones, 1 tablet, 1 laptop connected via wireless
- We do some light gaming, file copying and streaming with the NAS, stream Netflix, and do some downloading here and there
- Fiber internet speed is about 300 Mbps up and down

Thank you!

 

[hggomes]

RT-AC1900P is currently the best router in the market for the price IMO, if the budget is not a problem as mention go to a RT-AC88U (8xLAN) but your wallet...

 

[HungryPillow]

RT-AC1900P is currently the best router in the market for the price IMO, if the budget is not a problem as mention go to a RT-AC88U (8xLAN) but your wallet...

I Google'd the AC1900P but it seems like it's only available at Best Buy? Unfortunately I'm not in the US... is that model the same as the RT-AC68U?

The RT-AC88U looks really nice but will I need something that powerful? I don't really do anything crazy network wise and it's just me and my wife at home.

 

[hggomes]

You also have RT-AC56U which is great and very cheap.

 

[pege63]

There is also RT-AC66U, RT-AC68U, R7000 whoes also greate buy.

 

[hggomes]

RT-AC66U is a clone of RT-N66U old MIPS arch but with AC radio, avoid it.

RT-AC68U or RT-AC56U I would say, you can also take a look at new model RT-AC66U B1 (ARM), basically a RT-AC68U.

 

[HungryPillow]

Thanks for the replies... all these Asus models are really confusing! I think the AC68U and AC88U looks good and the difference is only about $100... but the AC88U does not seem to be very well reviewed on this website but is well reviewed on other websites whereas the Netgear X4S is well reviewed here but not that great on other websites.

What are the main differences between these 3 models and will I need/use them?

 

[pege63]

I would choose between Asus RT-AC68U or Netgear R7000, FW from 3rd parties for both routers are good and stable and cost only 1/3 of a Asus RT-AC88U here in Sweden.

 

[hggomes]

$100 difference? Don't think so...

RT-AC88U is too expensive for such device IMO, you should get a RT-AC68U.

ASUS

 

[HungryPillow]

Oh sorry, was just comparing the prices where I live (not in the US). The AC68U is about $250 and the AC88U is about $350. I'll try to do some more research, but it seems like everyone here is overwhelmingly suggesting Asus haha

 

[hggomes]

I wouldn't support / recommend company's like these:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ge...-critical-vulnerabilities-within/td-p/1085599


Even knowing their HW is great, the SW is not.

 

[hggomes]

Oh sorry, was just comparing the prices where I live (not in the US). The AC68U is about $250 and the AC88U is about $350. I'll try to do some more research, but it seems like everyone here is overwhelmingly suggesting Asus haha

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3320174&cm_re=rt-ac68u-_-33-320-174-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3320242&cm_re=rt-ac88u-_-33-320-242-_-Product

 

[pege63]

$100 difference? Don't think so...

RT-AC88U is too expensive for such device IMO, you should get a RT-AC68U.

ASUS

In Sweden the Asus RT-AC88U cost 3998 SEK, Netgear R7000 cost 998 SEK, Asus RT-AC68U cost 1290 SEK (1 USD is 8.50 SEK)

 

[pege63]

I wouldn't support / recommend company's like these:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ge...-critical-vulnerabilities-within/td-p/1085599


Even knowing their HW is great, the SW is not.

Well you can allways use XWRT or Cross-WRT FW.

380.62_1 (29-Sept-2016)
- CHANGED: Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2j

380.62 (23-Sept-2016)
- NEW: Added nano 2.7.0 (user-friendly text editor)
Documentation: https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.6/nano.html
Note that for space reasons, some of its features are disabled
for the RT-N66U and RT-AC66U. Entware users might want to
uninstall the Entware version if they had it installed and want
to use the built-in version instead.
- NEW: Option to toggle the display of passwords on the PPTPD and
OpenVPN server pages.
- NEW: Allow providing a vendor class on the WAN page (DHCP option 60)
- NEW: Add option to disable sending a RELEASE request when odhcp6c
exits, allowing you to retain your received prefix with some
ISPs.
- CHANGED: Updated nettle to 3.2 (used for dnssec) and increased
optimization level.
- CHANGED: Updated minidlna to 1.1.6
- CHANGED: Updated OpenVPN to 2.3.12
- CHANGED: Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2i
- CHANGED: Revamped the Wireless Log page:
- Merged some columns to gain more horizontal space
- Longer hostname shown (truncated names are now
shown in a tooltip)
- Display clients' IPv6 if they have one
- CHANGED: Accept up to 250 characters for OpenVPN client's
username and password (one provider needs 64).
- CHANGED: Hide the WPA key on the Wireless config page, and only
reveal it when you click on the field to edit it.
- FIXED: OpenVPN client shouldn't display policy routing settings
when using a TAP interface.
- FIXED: DSL/ATM overhead setting was visible on MIPS models, which
don't support it.
- FIXED: Editing OpenVPN or PPTP users with any value longer than
32 chars could lead to corruption of the user list.
- FIXED: Custom config file for igmpproxy wasn't working.
- FIXED: After turning off a Guest network, the next visit to the
Wireless Settings page would show that guest network's settings
instead of the parent band settings (Asus bug)
- FIXED: Smart Connect rules didn't apply on the RT-AC88U (backported
fix from 380_3941).
- FIXED: Numerous memory leaks in the networkmap service. (Asus bug)
- FIXED: Potential buffer overrun in the networkmap service. (Asus bug)
- FIXED: Broken IPv6 connectivity if enabling SSH brute force
protection (only MIPS models were affected)
- FIXED: 5G LED would fail to turn back on when exiting stealth mode.
- FIXED: Only hostname was used as remote server in an exported
OpenVPN client config when using Namecheap DDNS.
- FIXED: Security vulnerability (XSS/CSR) in httpd (backported
fix from 380_4005).
- FIXED: Chrome would try to autofill some fields (such as on the
DDNS configuration page), which could be problematic.
- FIXED: IPTraffic database was no longer properly named after
the router's MAC address on the AC88/AC3100/AC5300.
If you recently enabled it, you will need to either
re-create a new database, or rename the existing
database from tomato_cstats_000000000000.gz to
tomato_cstats_XXXXXXXXXXXX.gz, where "XXXXXXXXXXXX" is
your MAC as found with "nvram get et2macaddr", in
lowercase (AC88/AC3100/AC5300 only).

Regular traffic monitoring (stored in
tomato_rstats_XXXXXXXXXXXX.gz) is fine.

 

[hggomes]

Sure, like I said several times before 3rd party FW's are the only alternative to stock Netgear FW, quite sad buying a product being almost EOL (FW) already on the purchase day.

Also the idea of keep supporting Netgear products only because 3rd party FW alternative will only make things worse, they will simply quit bothering themselves knowing their products still selling, supporting company's with these kind of behavior will only keep things as they are permanently, the message to send is the opposite, not buy their products until they clean their own mess and start listening their clients instead of adding them to the ignore list.

I wouldn't use ASUSWRT on a Netgear device, I would buy a ASUS router instead in order to use it, but looking it that way we can say ASUS as a company is even greater for having alot better FW supporting even Netgear devices.

Have you seen how much times Netgear FW updates vs ASUS produts? It's 1 to 20.

Buy an ASUS product, they definitely diserve your money.