Moving to BT Fibre and need a router.

[Itsmee]

Hi folks.
I'm moving from Sky fibre to BT Infinity II to get me a few more Mbs and I'm hoping to pass it on to my devices with a new super duper new router.
I've read the forum for a day and watched you tube vids on routers etc. and I am more confused than ever as to what I need.
I have a lot of WiFi connected devices and I have a lot of LAN wired devices, I am using a TP-Link TL-SG1024D Gigabit Switch for most of the wired devices as the SKY router only has 4 ports.
See below for a list of connected devices if required.
I have no idea as to what type of WiFi my devices use so I would imagine one of the newer smart routers would be better.
I started thinking I needed a Netgear Nighthawk R800 or a ASUS AC5300 for definate.
Then I read a few articles and thought I would do better with a LinkSys WRT1900ACS and then I went into a tailspin and read to many articles and now my head hurts just thinking about routers. I'm happy to pay up to £250

I need a rock solid router that isnt going to crash all the time, can anyone help my poor fried brain?

Thanks for any help..


Connected devices

Wifi

1. 3x iPad Air
2. iPad 2
3. iPad Air Mini
4. PS Vita
5. Nexus 7
6. iPhone 6 x2
7. iPhone 5s x2

Wired

1. Win 10 pc x2
2. Smart TV x3
3. MEdia Box x3
4. PS4 x2
5. WiiU
6. Sony Amplifier
7. QNAp NAS
8. CCTV NAS

 

[Trip]

First off, how much download/upload in Mb/s are we dealing with? Second, I'd stop reading reviews and keep things simple. Most of the current crop of "high-end" all-in-ones are basically just overpriced betaware, and you can generally do a lot better by purchasing a solid older AC1900 unit with proven or alternative firmware, plus as many extra APs as are needed to service your coverage/bandwidth needs.

Specific recommendations might depend on how fast your current line is down/up.

 

[Itsmee]

Hi Trip and thanks for the speedy reply.
Infinity 2 gives a max of 74Mb up and 19 down speed. That is the max though and can be guaranteed.

 

[Trip]

On a 74/19 line, most any mid-tier and higher consumer router will deliver you that speed, even with most services running on the box, save perhaps VPN and/or certain kinds of packet processing like heavy QoS, a bunch of firewall rules, etc.

I go with an R7000 running xVortex or AdvancedTomato, or AC68U running the latest Merlin version or AdvancedTomato. Then supplement with as many additional access points as you need to fill in coverage gaps. Remember, generally it's better to have a few dispersed lower-power radios than several condensed radios in the same box and just trying to blast their signals.

 

[RogerSC]

Solely for the download speed that you're quoting, you really don't need an overpowered router. I'd stay away from the expensive ones that have the big wireless-AC ratings, anything over wireless-1900AC is just going to cost you more. Unless you have a couple of high-powered NAS's and are streaming lots from them. I'm liking the Netgear R7000 best at this point, but for me, dd-wrt firmware is working best. The latest firmware releases of Kong's dd-wrt are doing better on the wireless side on the R7000 than XVortex or tomato ARM were doing here. It was the other way around until recently, now that a couple of bugs have been fixed in dd-wrt, it's running better for me. That's what I'm using right now, as we speak, an R7000 using dd-wrt build 28600, and it's doing great.

Anyways, the RT-AC68U or RT-AC68P are also both strong contenders, and as mentioned above, I would use RMerlin's firmware on them.

I would also recommend the Linksys that you mentioned, except the firmware situation isn't great at the moment. It may improve soon, I'm hoping so, anyways.

 

[Itsmee]

Hi fellas and thanks for the pointers,

Does one of those routers allow for me to limit the time my kids can spend onto their consoles via LAN? I know its possible with WiFi clients but it must be for cabled connections too.

If this is QOS would I be better moving up the range to the Netgear R8000?

That will be the clincher as to which one I use.

 

[Trip]

Re- general features, including parent controls, scheduled access, etc. it's the firmware (software) running on that router which determines if that's possible or not -- which is why it's nice to pick a model like the R7000 or AC68U which support multiple kind of firmware.

Re- QoS, moving "up" to the R8000 will not help because QoS in both their architectures relies on CPU core clock speed and both the R7K and R8K use the same processor set at 1Ghz.

@RogerSC - Thanks for the update on dd-wrt. I've generally found it to be somewhat of a mess across sub-versions, breaking this while fixing that, with very little consistency in terms of being tightly bug-fixed. So I've usually stuck with Tomato, which has generally been much more reliable, albeit less performance-oriented. With a stable Kong build out, though, I'd definitely be willing to give it a look. Especially since, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only open-source firmware for the R7K that offers fq_codel as a QoS queuing discipline right from within the GUI.

 

[htismaqe]

I'm using DD-WRT (see my sig) and I'm currently at 50 days uptime on the Linksys WRT1900AC. Couldn't be happier.

 

[Itsmee]

Hi. well its the R7000 for me. thanks for helping me with my dilemma fellas.

 

[htismaqe]

Kong builds for both the R7000 and the WRT1900AC. I've used both routers. I think you'll be pretty happy.

 

[RogerSC]

@RogerSC - Thanks for the update on dd-wrt. I've generally found it to be somewhat of a mess across sub-versions, breaking this while fixing that, with very little consistency in terms of being tightly bug-fixed. So I've usually stuck with Tomato, which has generally been much more reliable, albeit less performance-oriented. With a stable Kong build out, though, I'd definitely be willing to give it a look. Especially since, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only open-source firmware for the R7K that offers fq_codel as a QoS queuing discipline right from within the GUI.

Yes, the R7000 does have a wide variety of firmware to pick from, which is a big positive, in addition to it being a great piece of hardware. For me it's dd-wrt, xvortex, or tomato *smile*, I have no reason to go to stock firmware anymore. The main advantage of Kong's dd-wrt builds are, as you note, that he actually can test them. For the other "beta" builds, Brainslayer is building for about 250 routers, so you can guess what fraction of those he can do hands-on testing with. The build that I just flashed this morning, 28815, has been very well-behaved, as was 28600 that I used for about a week with no problems. Either of these are very usable, stable, and fast. Definitely worth a try.

If you want to use a new Brainslayer build though, I'd wait until his group of canaries have tried it, and you see positive reports for your router in the dd-wrt forum thread for the new build. Bricking a router is no fun, although it can happen anytime you flash a router, it happens too often with BS's builds for me. Doesn't happen with Kong's builds.

 

[sfx2000]

I'm moving from Sky fibre to BT Infinity II to get me a few more Mbs and I'm hoping to pass it on to my devices with a new super duper new router.
I've read the forum for a day and watched you tube vids on routers etc. and I am more confused than ever as to what I need.
I have a lot of WiFi connected devices and I have a lot of LAN wired devices, I am using a TP-Link TL-SG1024D Gigabit Switch for most of the wired devices as the SKY router only has 4 ports.
See below for a list of connected devices if required.

A lot of youtube videos (expert advice there, eh?) are mostly focused on getting you to buy a router...

Perhaps a lot of advice here might suggest the same...

I'll be the devil's advocate here - see what equipment BT provides you - might be good enough for your needs...

Use it for a couple of weeks and see what it does - and then nail down the edges if needed..

 

[System Error Message]

the ac88U would be great but if you want a router that wont crash than perhaps a ccr1009 combined with an inexpensive ubiquiti indoor AC AP. You may have many devices but none of them bandwidth hungry on wifi.

If you're lucky you may get a zyxel modem/router which is good. I got one with BT openreach through a south yorkshire fibre optics ISP but they've closed down. That zyxel was a good piece of hardware but was locked by my ISP providing an even worse tp-link basic router.

 

[stevech]

Opinion: Computers using gigabit ethernet? A $150 or so dual band WIFi router will be fine. Your handheld devices likely don't need, can't use much more than 50 or 100Mbps due to WiFi. I use that sort of router (ASUS) and it just works. Samsung Android S6 gets 100/10Mbps one room away from router, on 5GHz. I'm in the school that says there is a point of diminishing returns for the cost of WiFi routers and watch out for expectations versus excessively costly products.