Hello! I only recently registered with this forum, so hello to everyone here! Thanks in advance for any advice you have for me. 
I have an old AirPort Time Capsule router that is having problems and I want to replace. I also am starting to have Wi-Fi 6 devices and would like to upgrade to get the faster capabilities. My internet connection is not the fastest, though, so I do have a couple esoteric needs for any router. Here are my requirements:
• Wi-Fi 6 support required.
• No cloud account required for setup. Some routers (like the eero) absolutely require an account in order to setup the routers. I don't want to have to be connected to the internet in order to manage my devices, and I don't want the manufacturer to have access to my router like that. If the feature is offered, but not required for use, that's fine.
• The ability to monitor traffic by device via some tool, either the built-in administrator tools, or outsourcing data processing to something like a Raspberry Pi would be fine. Because my internet isn't super-fast, I often need an answer to the question: "Which device is hogging bandwidth right now?"
• Low to medium cost. For a single router, probably no more than $300 or so (though I could be convinced otherwise if it's really worth it). For an appropriate two-piece mesh system I'm willing to pay up to $500.
Nice to haves:
• Wi-Fi 6E support would be nice for future-proofing, but optional since I don't have any 6E compatible devices yet.
• WPA3 support would also be nice for future proofing.
• Mesh networking, or at least the option, would be nice, but is not required. I live in an older home with walls that do dampen Wi-Fi signals quite a bit, so a 2-piece mesh kit would probably not be overkill (3-pieces would probably be too much).
• Ability to handle gigabit internet speeds.
Thanks for any help! Here are my findings so far:
• Netgear routers don't seem to have any ability to do traffic analysis by device. They do have a "traffic monitor" feature, but that is only for overall bandwidth usage going to the internet, not segregated by device. So that only answers the question, "Am I going over my monthly data cap?", not "Which device is hogging bandwidth right now?" Here's the manual describing the feature, and I got screenshots of the UI on another forum: https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/RAX50/RAX50_UM_EN.pdf
• ASUS devices *do* seem to have a traffic meter feature in their admin interfaces. How...ever, they outsource that part of their firmware to Trend Micro, and they send all your data to Trend Micro, who does who knows what with it. To even use the features, you have to agree to Trend Micro's privacy policy and then install something on the ASUS router (who knows what). And Trend Micro's privacy policy includes terms that say the router can send your e-mails to them?! I find it unlikely that that actually happens, especially since retrieving e-mail is usually over SSL, so not sure how they would decrypt your e-mails to send them to Trend Micro. Regardless, this is scummy enough that it rules out ASUS routers because I wouldn't be able to use the traffic meter feature because of the privacy invasiveness. More on this here: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3194843/asus-router-warnings-on-privacy-and-security.html
• I do seem to have found a device that might fit my requirements, though, and it's the TP-Link Archer AX50. Surprisingly, they actually have an emulator of their admin interface here! https://emulator.tp-link.com/ax3000-us-v1/index.html
If you go to that emulator, click on Advanced at the top, then scroll down to System Tools at the left, and click Traffic Monitor, that feature seems to satisfy my requirement of being able to get per-device bandwidth usage. Laughably, though, you can't actually enable that feature in the interface emulator. But I can see a flash of the table which includes "Real-Time Rate" and "Traffic Usage" segregated by device. And the ? button reveals a description of "Displays the traffic usage of a device in the past 10 minutes or that of all devices in the past 10 minutes/24 hours/7 days", which is exactly what I want.
I did notice that the AX50 comes with "TP-Link HomeCare by Trend Micro" which makes me nervous that maybe TP-Link is using the same privacy-invasive stuff as the ASUS routers do, though? See https://www.tp-link.com/us/homecare/ . Can anybody confirm whether the traffic analysis is done on-device, or is it sent out to Trend Micro too?
It's unfortunate it doesn't have WPA3 capabilities, but oh well. At only $120, it doesn't seem like a super-big investment if I end up replacing it in the near future with a mesh Wi-Fi 6E router once the prices come down.
Any other suggestions, or does anybody have a screenshot of the TP-Link Traffic Monitor in action? That would be REALLY helpful.
I have an old AirPort Time Capsule router that is having problems and I want to replace. I also am starting to have Wi-Fi 6 devices and would like to upgrade to get the faster capabilities. My internet connection is not the fastest, though, so I do have a couple esoteric needs for any router. Here are my requirements:• Wi-Fi 6 support required.
• No cloud account required for setup. Some routers (like the eero) absolutely require an account in order to setup the routers. I don't want to have to be connected to the internet in order to manage my devices, and I don't want the manufacturer to have access to my router like that. If the feature is offered, but not required for use, that's fine.
• The ability to monitor traffic by device via some tool, either the built-in administrator tools, or outsourcing data processing to something like a Raspberry Pi would be fine. Because my internet isn't super-fast, I often need an answer to the question: "Which device is hogging bandwidth right now?"
• Low to medium cost. For a single router, probably no more than $300 or so (though I could be convinced otherwise if it's really worth it). For an appropriate two-piece mesh system I'm willing to pay up to $500.
Nice to haves:
• Wi-Fi 6E support would be nice for future-proofing, but optional since I don't have any 6E compatible devices yet.
• WPA3 support would also be nice for future proofing.
• Mesh networking, or at least the option, would be nice, but is not required. I live in an older home with walls that do dampen Wi-Fi signals quite a bit, so a 2-piece mesh kit would probably not be overkill (3-pieces would probably be too much).
• Ability to handle gigabit internet speeds.
Thanks for any help! Here are my findings so far:
• Netgear routers don't seem to have any ability to do traffic analysis by device. They do have a "traffic monitor" feature, but that is only for overall bandwidth usage going to the internet, not segregated by device. So that only answers the question, "Am I going over my monthly data cap?", not "Which device is hogging bandwidth right now?" Here's the manual describing the feature, and I got screenshots of the UI on another forum: https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/RAX50/RAX50_UM_EN.pdf
• ASUS devices *do* seem to have a traffic meter feature in their admin interfaces. How...ever, they outsource that part of their firmware to Trend Micro, and they send all your data to Trend Micro, who does who knows what with it. To even use the features, you have to agree to Trend Micro's privacy policy and then install something on the ASUS router (who knows what). And Trend Micro's privacy policy includes terms that say the router can send your e-mails to them?! I find it unlikely that that actually happens, especially since retrieving e-mail is usually over SSL, so not sure how they would decrypt your e-mails to send them to Trend Micro. Regardless, this is scummy enough that it rules out ASUS routers because I wouldn't be able to use the traffic meter feature because of the privacy invasiveness. More on this here: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3194843/asus-router-warnings-on-privacy-and-security.html
• I do seem to have found a device that might fit my requirements, though, and it's the TP-Link Archer AX50. Surprisingly, they actually have an emulator of their admin interface here! https://emulator.tp-link.com/ax3000-us-v1/index.html
If you go to that emulator, click on Advanced at the top, then scroll down to System Tools at the left, and click Traffic Monitor, that feature seems to satisfy my requirement of being able to get per-device bandwidth usage. Laughably, though, you can't actually enable that feature in the interface emulator. But I can see a flash of the table which includes "Real-Time Rate" and "Traffic Usage" segregated by device. And the ? button reveals a description of "Displays the traffic usage of a device in the past 10 minutes or that of all devices in the past 10 minutes/24 hours/7 days", which is exactly what I want.
I did notice that the AX50 comes with "TP-Link HomeCare by Trend Micro" which makes me nervous that maybe TP-Link is using the same privacy-invasive stuff as the ASUS routers do, though? See https://www.tp-link.com/us/homecare/ . Can anybody confirm whether the traffic analysis is done on-device, or is it sent out to Trend Micro too?
It's unfortunate it doesn't have WPA3 capabilities, but oh well. At only $120, it doesn't seem like a super-big investment if I end up replacing it in the near future with a mesh Wi-Fi 6E router once the prices come down.
Any other suggestions, or does anybody have a screenshot of the TP-Link Traffic Monitor in action? That would be REALLY helpful.
