Help choosing the right ASUS router for a busy house?

[OldWolf]

Reposted with permission from jdabbs due to spam and confusion.
*Bolded for quick scanning.

Hello all,

I'm having some severe internet issues, both on wifi and ethernet, which I suspect may be our router (lord only knows with as many devices as we have, but we do have a 30mbps - and it bogs even at low use it seems). I can't say that our router is even to blame, but I'm shopping for an affordable router for us.

We have 3 xboxes (rarely used all at once), 2 desktops (1 wifi/1 lan), 5 laptops, 1 tablet, and a couple of phones that occasionally use wifi. The devices are rarely used all at once, but traffic can get busy when we've got a couple guys gaming on xbox, 3 streaming netflix, and whatever else.

We live in a neighborhood full of wifi, lots of devices up and down the block.

I would like to put some open firmware on it, it sounds like Tomato is the most appropriate for home use. I also prefer Asus as a company, although I've never gotten a chance to try one of their routers (I read good things though). I'm not set on Asus though, just a preference.

In general, I have a sliding budget. We're all college students, so spending <$100 would be preferred, but I could probably go up to $175 or $200 if it's justifiable. We're all tired of the internet bogging on us, or dying in our video games due to lag, so we'll do what we can.

So what do you guys think? What routers would you suggest for our traffic?

 

[RMerlin]

If you have a lot of interference from neighbours and you don't need to cover a house with too many floors or too many walls between the router and everyone else, look for a dual band router like the RT-N66U. The 5 GHz band has a smaller coverage area, but you will probably get almost no interference from neighbours (unless they are also 5 GHz users).

Otherwise, the RT-N16 would probably be enough for your needs, at a lower price point.

 

[dawson46]

We have 40+ devices on an RT-A66U (N only) - 4 of which have the Netgear USB AC adapters. We have our old router as an access point for 6 Sony Dashes and anything legacy B/G).

I used InSSIDer to see what channels were the best for our router in our development.

Now if we could just get comcast to go beyond 105