Recommendation for Reliable Router with good QoS (200mbps down)

[Bobthemagicmoose]

My current combo router/switch/ap (Asus ac68u) is causing more headaches than I'd like and am looking to use distinct devices for each function.

My main use case is normal browsing, video conferencing, some gaming, and heavy Dropbox usage with two users and an average number of devices. As my pipe is only 200mpbs down, I'm hoping there are some older routers that can do good QoS for relatively cheap. My main priority is I don't want to hear "did you break the internet again?"

 

[avtella]

You should be able to install OpenWRT as you have an older Broadcom based router, newer BCM ones aren’t open source friendly. After installing OpenWRT you can use either traditional QoS package or even better use Cake SQM (specifically “Piece of Cake” option) which I would recommend.

Other option if you really want to buy another router is to get a Qualcomm/Atheros chipset based router and install OpenWRT. The Netgear R7800 is probably the best one on OpenWRT at the moment IMHO. Could get even cheaper models like the R7500v2 or even older ones, don’t get the R7500v1 as that has an unsupported Quantenna 5Ghz chipset.

If splitting into two distinct devices I’d get a 2nd 68U/66UB1 or use an R7800/R7500v2 as the AP due to superior wireless and use the AC68U for OpenWRT. If you think your current wireless capabilities are good enough do the reverse, as those two NG models have much faster CPUs for the likes of VPN performance and superior performance without HW accelerated NAT.

 

[Bobthemagicmoose]

Thank you for your advice! I'll probably do that and disable wireless which seemed unstable, using a second device as an access point.