I need to buy a new wireless router

[SSri]

Hello,

I am in the market for a new wireless router.

Current Situation Vigor 2820n dual wan router. A solid router, which has now been moved to my daughter's for her university. We do not any router at home. We are directly connected through a modem for my workstation only.

Equipments A router is needed to connect (1) workstation, (2) two laptops - n cards, (3) three mobiles. In the next few months, I plan to get ac cards for my workstation, two laptops. There is a plan to get another ultra book with an ac card and a tablet (hopefully with an ac card). In addition, two mobiles will be replaced by new iphones possibly in spring/summer.

I also plan to get a NAS or build one. If the latter, I would convert my truck (laptop ), which houses an i7 950 as a DIY NAS project perhaps taking the cheap IKEA rack/stand route. The objective is to use this plug-n-go or DIY nas as media centre for the house and backup solution. The Asus RT AC66U does not sport a USB 3, which would be nice for my NAS.

Router advice: Since we do not have a router at home, we need to get this asap. I am aware that getting an ac router is too soon and too many £££ to buy now. Does it make sense to get an ac router than an "n" class considering we do not replace the router every year? I got the vigor 2820vn in 2009. It is still going pretty strong, even after 5 years, now at my daughter's accommodation.

If it is "n", I would be tempted to go for vigor, though very pricey (£179 - £212), or ASUS (RT N66U costing £118 at amazon.co.uk). The Asus RT AC66U costs £179 again at amazon. If I were to buy an ac router, the price difference between ac66u, ac68u and r7000 is marginal. I have already read the comparative reviews of ac68u and r7000 on this site. The choice between these two is perhaps R7000. The issues, which I have are the following: (1) if I buy one of the ac routers (say R7000), would it be compatible as "802.11 ac" spec now stands approved? (2) connection problems, stability issues and drop outs in the ac1900 routers (3) I will not be replacing the routers for the next 3-4 years unless it breaks.

I would appreciate any help and recommendations. Apologies for any errors in this post.

Many thanks,
SSri

 

[sinshiva]

Hi,

Personally, i'd stick with N for another year. AC and the future of wireless has pretty far to go, yet. I think the USB features of these routers are cool, but even in the best of cases, i'd not consider a router a suitable alternative to a NAS for all but the lightest usage. I prefer devices to have dedicated purposes, which is my main reason for using low power devices in the first place.

That said, i've no need for a NAS and have no expertise to offer on NAS products. If _I_ were to purchase a NAS, i'd likely put something together myself with a nifty Intel processor. Any i3 will crush any prefab NAS product on the market. You could probably pick up just such a device in the form of a headless desktop from walmart and have the benefit of Windows applications, if you're on a primarily MS-based network, for example, and for cheap. Of course, this may severely hinder your ability to add storage. I'm saying this despite much love for Linux, too, btw. I'm sure there are plenty who have something to say on how you should go about building a NAS.

Again, I've no expertise on modern NAS products, so i'm not saying any of which are bad, just what i'd prefer.

 

[SSri]

Hi,

Personally, i'd stick with N for another year.

Thanks for the heads up on the router and NAS. NAS on the router is an option, which I would consider, though I am not averse to having a dedicated setup for the same when I am ready to cross that bridge.

The immediate need is a router. As I said before, I have given that off to my daughter. So, we are back to square one considering my circumstances. Should I be buying an N router or pay the same price to get an AC? If the latter, should it be AC1750 OR AC1900.

Thanks

 

[sinshiva]

Hey again,

do you think there's a chance you'd want to run more than a single AP at your house? being in an apartment, i've no need anymore to run more than one, but i wish i had a good enough reason to for the sake of playing with Ubiquiti's 'zero-handoff' or whatever it's called, which gives your clients seamless roaming between APs.

If you go for AC, my only advice would be not to break the bank. Later, you could just move the AP to being a dedicated router if you decide to upgrade to a more finalized product later on to run as your AP.

I particularly like Asus' products, others might prefer Netgear and a smaller percentage are on something else. I think most linksys devices in use in the world are old. Nobody seems to have everything perfect, but Ubiquiti does seem to be ahead of the game when it comes to wireless networking in general. Asus and Netgear products seem a little more multipurpose than most. If you go with Asus, there's fantastic support to be had here at this forum. Can't speak for Netgear and i've all but given up on linksys. I had a netgear G router that killed my old linksys routers in NAT performance, though, so that's something.

bottom line, i'd get either the netgear r7000 or the asus AC68; ac1900 routers just because they'll have a little more headroom for your (future) AC devices. the cost difference is negligible. i like the firmware on the asus routers as well as their physical appearance, but i wouldn't expect either to have enough of a difference in performance to sway my opinion one way or another

 

[L&LD]

At this point, I would agree with sinshiva that the two top routers are the R7000 and the RT-AC68U.

Depending on how large your home is; you may also want to consider the RT-AC56U as it was available the last few weeks in the $100 range.

The other routers have the edge in range though - so keep the area that you want covered in mind when deciding (or if you can; try all three in your home).

 

[SSri]

Thanks Sinshiva and L&LD.

At present, we are living in a two-story house. Vigor did a great job in giving excellent wireless range all over the house including the conservatory, patio and garage. We hope to move into a three story detached house at the end of summer. The need for a couple of APs would come into play hopefully at that time. I may probably keep the modem/router at a central location or attic.

I am really tempted to get the ubiquity router and AP. I am not a networking expert. I therefore do not see myself enjoying the command line firewall interface, although I did manage to plugin incoming/outgoing rules using win7 advanced firewall. This would be the only reason why I am not keen to buy the ubiquity router. Tim Higgin's excellent review http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32012-first-look-ubiquiti-edgerouter-lite nicely sums up the steep learning curve.

I wish Vigor has an ac router in their armour. I talked to them this week. They do not have any short-term plans to bring out an AC class router. I think they would bring it out in 2015.

The choice is really R7000 and AC68U, though I am learning towards Netgear, which is hitting the UK market in the last week of Jan 2014. I will keep you posted.

Many thanks again.

 

[sinshiva]

Hey, an aside; you could always pick up a router you're more comfortable with and add ubiquiti APs. I'm certain this would work, but i have to admit i've never so much as seen an Ubiquiti product in person. hopefully @thiggins may stop by this thread to give the green light, but he'd also likely advise that you stick with what your comfortable with. i can't imagine their APs being overly complicated to configure, at least.

 

[remixedcat]

USB features are a no-no for consumer class routers. Not reliable. I have an issue on a few that I won't name (2 brands) that fried a couple USB sticks. They were fine all this time used in my computer but I had them hooked up to the routers and both sticks are not readable in windows server 2012, windows 8, windows 8.1, windows 7, and windows server 2008R2. Can't even format them with anything.

Also the USB transfer speeds are bad. Most average a write speed of only 4.5MBytes/sec which is not enough for serious backups. Might only be good enough to store a few small songs, or pictures, or some small .exe files but I would not try to backup a whole system on one of those. While a USB2.0 drive directly connected averages 36Mbytes/sec and a 3.0 drive averages 50-60Mbytes/sec+ If it's over the NAS it will be that or greater.

I would build or buy a NAS instead and get a good one that has good enough specs for transcoding. People keep recommending Synology for that. I haven't one myself but I want to when I can afford to. Shoot for a Core2Duo or higher if you want to transcode to Rokus or the like for stuff like PLEX media server.

 

[SSri]

you could always pick up a router you're more comfortable with and add ubiquiti APs. I

Given the performance, reliability and stability of ubiquity APs, it will be a great add on as APs.

USB features are a no-no for consumer class routers. Not reliable. I

Hmm. Thanks. I will keep in my mind. The plan for NAS, hopefully after summer, is any way not to use the USB directly on NAS. I would probably attach through ethernet or wireless and use the USB 3 to back up the NAS.

Synchology and QNAP are two choices, though I would like to build as my truck -- notebook -- sporting an i7 950 is not in regular use.

In any case, thanks every one for the advice. I do not want to turn this "wireless buying advice " into a NAS discussion.

I will wait for the Netgear R7000 release in the UK. The price difference between AC1900 and AC1750 is negligible.

Cheers!