What's new

Looking for New Router - Best Bug-Free High Performer Wanted

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

35USCinMKE

New Around Here
I just joined the forum, so apologies if this has been asked and answered. A search of the forum showed similar questions, but these were several months old and comments may have changed since…

I currently have a 4+-year-old Cisco/Linksys E3000 wireless router in a household that has four laptops, four iPads, three iPhones, a smart TV, a dumb TV with Roku, Xbox One, Sonos system (five units), Synology NAS, and Xbox One. Starting within the last month, the wireless connection disconnects one, some, or all of these devices. Our internet is 30/5 Mbps (and VoIP phone) is via Time Warner cable. My cable provider tells me that I have not had interruption to the internet service. Powering the wireless router off and on reconnects all the devices to the internet. My limited technical assessment is that the router is failing and needs to be replaced. I will not be customizing the settings and need a router that will deliver high quality service (my wife works from home and frequently has web-meetings). It seems that the best options are AC3200, AC2400/AC2600, and AC1900.

If cost is not an object, what do you recommend? Reviews on AC3200, AC2600, AC2400 from various sources seem a little mixed, but many are several months to a year old. Have these next gen units been out long enough for all the bugs to be worked out? Will I notice better performance over the tried and true (i.e., bug-free?) AC1900?
 
Well - if one wants bug-free and fast...

Airport Extreme AC - simply put, stable and fast... - plug it in, and it just works, not as feature rich as others, but perhaps this is a plus..

Linksys WRT1900AC - Fast, and recently stable - they recently added OpenVPN to it's feature set, and a fantastic radio platform - and class leading SMB performance for attached disks

Asus AC68U - fast and community supported - rMerlin's builds help out a lot for stability and reasonable extension of capabilities of this device - a define tweaker option

Netgear R7000 - fast and scary, but generally folks suggest that factory and 3rd party firmware is better these days..
 
IMHO currently the best consumer router out there is the Linksys EA8500. Despite being relatively new, its rock solid & its wireless speeds piss all all over AC1900 routers, wrt to existing 2x2 & 3x3 clients. Only slightly better wifi speeds than the Asus AC87R/U but the Asus is highly unstable.
 
My recommendation continues to be AC1900 class routers, with the NETGEAR R7000 and the ASUS RT-AC68 the top-ranked for performance.

I would not touch AC2350/AC2400 class routers. They are now obsoleted by AC2600 and have ongoing problems with 5 GHz connection stability.

AC3200 class is useful only if you have lots of 5 GHz clients. Their two 5 GHz radios lets you spread the load and separate fast and slow clients. You'll need to do this manually. The "Smart Connects" feature isn't very.

Don't try to outguess or future-proof the WiFi router market. Products are released before they are completely baked and the constant churn of new products with larger numbers is aimed at pulling in unknowledgeable buyers.
 
I would not touch AC2350/AC2400 class routers. They are now obsoleted by AC2600 and have ongoing problems with 5 GHz connection stability.

AC3200 class is useful only if you have lots of 5 GHz clients. Their two 5 GHz radios lets you spread the load and separate fast and slow clients. You'll need to do this manually. The "Smart Connects" feature isn't very.

Thumbs up - totally agree - AC1900 is the best choice at the upper end right now, and I agree that AC2600 likely will be the next good step - only a couple of devices out there right now, but as we go into Q4-2015 I think we'll see more of them - but there is still a lack of clients at the moment.
 
Agreed on the AC1900 vs others point spearheaded by Tim.

Further, with that many devices and VoIP contending for bandwidth priority and airtime, at least one AC1900 should be used, and you definitely want a unit capable of effective Quality of Service. You could use the AC1900 as your router to start, then flash third-party firmware per sfx2000's outline if performance is flaky/lacking, or just drop-in a proper wired router (UBNT ER-X, etc.) and turn the all-in-one(s) into access point(s) only. Things done in that order usually fix most SOHO networking issues. GL!
 
Thanks everyone for the comments -- very helpful. Looks like AC1900 is the way to go. One follow up question is what would qualify as "lots of 5 GHz clients"? I should be able to figure out which of my devices is 5 GHz, but not sure how many is a lot (or at least a lot operating at the same time).
 
Thanks everyone for the comments -- very helpful. Looks like AC1900 is the way to go. One follow up question is what would qualify as "lots of 5 GHz clients"? I should be able to figure out which of my devices is 5 GHz, but not sure how many is a lot (or at least a lot operating at the same time).
some (most?) handheld devices tend to flop back to 2.4GHz if both it and 5GHz are known to the handheld. Some few will flip to 5GHz automatically.

In my case, 5GHz was a waste of $. Rarely used by my 4 portables, unless I take the time to push them. Not worth it.
 
Thanks everyone for the comments -- very helpful. Looks like AC1900 is the way to go. One follow up question is what would qualify as "lots of 5 GHz clients"? I should be able to figure out which of my devices is 5 GHz, but not sure how many is a lot (or at least a lot operating at the same time).

If you have a mixture of low-speed clients and high-speed clients, and having those high speed clients running at top speed is critical, then the AC3200 is a good idea - you want ideally to keep the slow and the fast clients on separate radios.

Personally, I simply keep all my low speed clients (such as my phone) on the 2.4 GHz band, and dedicate my 5 GHz band to my laptop and my Nexus 9 (which has the same 866 Mbps interface as the laptop).

Same if you have multiple high speed clients that frequently need to do large file transfers at the same time, and at least one of them is time critical (i.e. it's doing video streaming or online gaming).

There's no specific rule there sadly, it's very situational.
 
I'd put in a $30 Access Point for the handhelds/slow-pokes. Rather than buying a $$$$ WiFi router.
 
OP: Please step back, take a deep breath, and be sure you want to be an Internet Service Provider to multiple tenants. Really big mistake, in terms of support, and legal liabilities.
 
My recommendation continues to be AC1900 class routers, with the NETGEAR R7000 and the ASUS RT-AC68 the top-ranked for performance.

I would not touch AC2350/AC2400 class routers. They are now obsoleted by AC2600 and have ongoing problems with 5 GHz connection stability.

AC3200 class is useful only if you have lots of 5 GHz clients. Their two 5 GHz radios lets you spread the load and separate fast and slow clients. You'll need to do this manually. The "Smart Connects" feature isn't very.

Don't try to outguess or future-proof the WiFi router market. Products are released before they are completely baked and the constant churn of new products with larger numbers is aimed at pulling in unknowledgeable buyers.
With the RT-AC68 does it matter if its the U or the P variant? I understand the difference but is there particular one you encourage to get?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
The only difference between the RT-AC68U vs. the RT-AC68P is the cpu clock speeds - both are similar otherwise - if you can get the RT-AC68P at the same price (or very close)...
 
The only difference between the RT-AC68U vs. the RT-AC68P is the cpu clock speeds - both are similar otherwise - if you can get the RT-AC68P at the same price (or very close)...
Thank your for your response! I'm in the same situation as OP where I'm in the market for a new router. Is the R7000 still the top choice? I know Tim ranked it as number one so does it come to just preference or is Netgear still the better option?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
Thank your for your response! I'm in the same situation as OP where I'm in the market for a new router. Is the R7000 still the top choice? I know Tim ranked it as number one so does it come to just preference or is Netgear still the better option?

I own neither, both are good choices with good community support - early firmware was a bit spooky (well, all AC1900's were a bit spooky in the early days).

Might also consider the Linksys WRT1900ac - this one I do have a lot of experience with, and is what I installed at my mother's house - rock solid and fairly fast... I was recently back home, and we had over 60 clients attached to it and it was ok..

(note, most, if not all AC1900 class routers won't do that, and Linksys doesn't suggest doing that, and later in the evening after the social event, I did reboot it as it stopped issuing DHCP leases)...

Small price premium compared to some of the other AC1900's - but I've seen them on sale in various big box stores for $179 (USD) from time to time...
 
I own neither, both are good choices with good community support - early firmware was a bit spooky (well, all AC1900's were a bit spooky in the early days).

Might also consider the Linksys WRT1900ac - this one I do have a lot of experience with, and is what I installed at my mother's house - rock solid and fairly fast... I was recently back home, and we had over 60 clients attached to it and it was ok..

(note, most, if not all AC1900 class routers won't do that, and Linksys doesn't suggest doing that, and later in the evening after the social event, I did reboot it as it stopped issuing DHCP leases)...

Small price premium compared to some of the other AC1900's - but I've seen them on sale in various big box stores for $179 (USD) from time to time...
I greatly appreciate your feedback! I'm a newbie to these forums and I've been researching and posting and you're the only one to actually help. Thanks again.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
If you have a mixture of low-speed clients and high-speed clients, and having those high speed clients running at top speed is critical, then the AC3200 is a good idea - you want ideally to keep the slow and the fast clients on separate radios.

Personally, I simply keep all my low speed clients (such as my phone) on the 2.4 GHz band, and dedicate my 5 GHz band to my laptop and my Nexus 9 (which has the same 866 Mbps interface as the laptop).

That approach is perhaps a better one - moving the slower/legacy devices down to 2.4GHz and keeping the high bandwidth devices on 5GHz is one that I also employ when/where possible.

Would be nice to have a decent band steering method to do this, but that means that more info would have to come from the WiFi chipsets back to the core SoC (802.11 sessions stay in the WiFi, the TCP/IP and UDP sessions are tracked on the CPU).

Smart Connect on the X-Stream based devices was a decent first attempt at least, but going thru the forums, it does seem like there is opportunity for Broadcom to improve upon it.
 
Looking for same.
So the recommendation is the Linksys AC3200? Or perhaps the Air Port extreme is still the most stable (maybe a new one on the 9th)?
I really don't like to have to reset my router from time to time like on my Tp-Link wr-1043nd v1!

That approach is perhaps a better one - moving the slower/legacy devices down to 2.4GHz and keeping the high bandwidth devices on 5GHz is one that I also employ when/where possible.

Using 2.4 and 5 for the high bandwidth devices?

What about this one:

I'd put in a $30 Access Point for the handhelds/slow-pokes. Rather than buying a $$$$ WiFi router.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top