router suggestions

[calvin berg]

So i live in a house with 4 other housemates. None of us are very knowledgeable about internet or routers. We pay for comcast internet service (unfortunately they are the only ISP we could get) 105 Mbps- tell me if I need to ugrade this as well

We have phones, I pods, I pads, a ps4, a ps3, a xbox, a bluesy player, 3 laptops, and 2 desktops that will be connected to the router through WiFi or ethernet cable much of the time multiple devices will be streaming videos and gaming (usually league of legends) and sometimes 4 computers playing league all at once and 2 videos/movies being streamed we need a router that can handle a load this big without glitching the games or buffering videos I've looked at the archer c7, c7 v2, c8, and c9 but I'm not certain if they can handle the load

 

[Blade Runner]

IMO consumer-grade routers are acceptable as access points. You haven't mentioned P2P activity as a requirement. Exercise geek cred while assembling a pfSense firewall, setup router as access point behind firewall, lined into gigabit switch, and take advantage of Ethernet cable.

My P2P activities crashed two ASUS routers. I assembled a pfSense box and it can handle any load.

 

[stevech]

So i live in a house with 4 other housemates. None of us are very knowledgeable about internet or routers. We pay for comcast internet service (unfortunately they are the only ISP we could get) 105 Mbps- tell me if I need to ugrade this as well

We have phones, I pods, I pads, a ps4, a ps3, a xbox, a bluesy player, 3 laptops, and 2 desktops that will be connected to the router through WiFi or ethernet cable much of the time multiple devices will be streaming videos and gaming (usually league of legends) and sometimes 4 computers playing league all at once and 2 videos/movies being streamed we need a router that can handle a load this big without glitching the games or buffering videos I've looked at the archer c7, c7 v2, c8, and c9 but I'm not certain if they can handle the load

105Mbs down is likely DOCSIS 3 on cable. That's as fast as you can get these days. The upstream for that is probably 10Mbps.

The primary thing you can do is get people to be polite/considerate and not be a bandwidth hog by running torrents, big downloads, more than 1 or 2 video streams, in prime time. Get everyone you can off of WiFi and on to wired. You can put in 1 or 2 WiFi access points, each with a different SSID, put each on a different non-overlapped channel (1,6,11 in 2.4GHz), or 5GHz if their client supports. This can unburden WiFi a bit.
Router QoS (bandwidth management) doesn't really work in consumer products.

 

[Nullity]

105Mbs down is likely DOCSIS 3 on cable. That's as fast as you can get these days. The upstream for that is probably 10Mbps.

The primary thing you can do is get people to be polite/considerate and not be a bandwidth hog by running torrents, big downloads, more than 1 or 2 video streams, in prime time. Get everyone you can off of WiFi and on to wired. You can put in 1 or 2 WiFi access points, each with a different SSID, put each on a different non-overlapped channel (1,6,11 in 2.4GHz), or 5GHz if their client supports. This can unburden WiFi a bit.
Router QoS (bandwidth management) doesn't really work in consumer products.

Threats of bodily harm are much more effective than any QoS, when dealing with excessive P2P traffic.


An Asus RT-AC68U would probably work well. I dunno if pfSense is good for newbies. I had to learn quite a bit to finally feel comfortable with pfSense, but I have enjoyed the journey.

If you want to go the DIY route, I would probably choose IPFire before pfSense.

 

[Blade Runner]

Threats of bodily harm are much more effective than any QoS, when dealing with excessive P2P traffic.


An Asus RT-AC68U would probably work well. I dunno if pfSense is good for newbies. I had to learn quite a bit to finally feel comfortable with pfSense, but I have enjoyed the journey.

If you want to go the DIY route, I would probably choose IPFire before pfSense.

Linux = Chaos
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/confessions-of-a-pfsense-newbie.5379/

 

[joegreat]

So i live in a house with 4 other housemates. None of us are very knowledgeable about internet or routers. We pay for comcast internet service (unfortunately they are the only ISP we could get) 105 Mbps- tell me if I need to ugrade this as well

...need a router that can handle a load this big without glitching the games or buffering videos I've looked at the archer c7, c7 v2, c8, and c9 but I'm not certain if they can handle the load

My suggestions is always the same: See my footer for details!

 

[System Error Message]

Consider ubiquiti and mikrotik as they both have very good QoS and firmwares that can handle p2p loads. They have less chaos from using linux even though they are harder to configure.

Sometimes someone will initiate a download or a HD stream while someone else is gaming or using VOIP and not know what the others are doing. Effective QoS is about using priority with some bandwidth control. I always put latency sensitive programs first. Consumer routers will crash with p2p loads but there has been some configs that allow the tables to be stored in ram instead of some small chip cache but it means no hardware acceleration. CTF helps to lower the load though.

There are also guides with using ASUS routers with RMerlin firmware for QoS, as long as you can use priority with bandwidth control you can make an effective QoS setup.

Even with set amount of bandwidth trying to watch too many streams would obviously cause buffering, but if the bandwidth is distributed properly according to needs than it may be possible to make everything run smooth. Latency sensitive programs should be processed first while some programs like streams require a set amount of banwidth.

 

[stevech]

Consider ubiquiti and mikrotik as they both have very good QoS and firmwares that can handle p2p loads. They have less chaos from using linux even though they are harder to configure.

Likely, these vendors' products are too heavy lifting for the OP.