Best Home Wireless Router?

[hevnsnt]

Hey all,

Looking to see if there is a commonly held 'best' home router. I am primarily concerned with speed, and coverage. I live in a fairly large house, and ran cat6 everywhere as it was being built, so location of the router is not an issue.

Additionally, I would like the router to be able to handle VPN connections (allowing me to VPN back home when on the road).

Are there any models that are known for their speed?

Devices on my network:
multiple chromecasts
multiple laptops
cellphones/ipads/etc...

The chromecasts pull a lot of data from a plex server, and that is my primary need, to make that as flawless as possible.

Thanks!

 

[Elixer]

Asus rt-n66u is nice, if you are looking for AC, then the Asus rt-n68u would work.
These are nice, since you can load them up with 3rd party firmware if you wish.

You don't mention a price range, so, not sure if the above will work for you.

 

[nickbits]

Second vote for Asus rt-n68u

 

[hevnsnt]

thanks all,

I think I would prefer to go AC, I dont really have a price range -- obviously I would like to keep it as price effective as possible, but I tend to keep equipment for a long time, so I would like to buy the best possible now.

Is there any reason (other than cost) not to go AC?

 

[smitbret]

thanks all,

I think I would prefer to go AC, I dont really have a price range -- obviously I would like to keep it as price effective as possible, but I tend to keep equipment for a long time, so I would like to buy the best possible now.

Is there any reason (other than cost) not to go AC?

At this point, no. It is "kind of" new, but for the most part it is mature enough to make it valuable if you have AC clients or planning on getting some.

If all of your clients are 'N' though, then you would get no benefit. Your Chromecast(s) work on the N band so you won't see any benefit from AC there.

 

[EvaCarey]

A wireless router is a hub for your home and business network. Routers also provide additional capabilities such as USB port for attaching in outer drive. There are many routers which is suitable for home like Asus rt-n68u, skydog, Linksys EA6900 AC1900 etc.

 

[azazel1024]

At this point, no. It is "kind of" new, but for the most part it is mature enough to make it valuable if you have AC clients or planning on getting some.

If all of your clients are 'N' though, then you would get no benefit. Your Chromecast(s) work on the N band so you won't see any benefit from AC there.

Not true, check smallnetbuilders testing of 11ac routers. My results come close to mirroring there's. 11ac routers can provide significant benefits to even 11n gear.

My 2.4GHz performance is up 20-80% between my AC1750 router and my N600 router and the N router managed pretty darned good performance, the AC1750 is just significantly better, especially at medium to long range.

So saying 11ac will do nothing for 11n is actually untrue, it'll benefit 11n clients as well (generally better code and often better components in the 11ac gear seems to be the reason why).

 

[smitbret]

True, I had forgotten about that article from smallnetbuilder.com. One thing to note though, was that using an AC router increased bandwidth for N but did nothing to extend range.

Also, curious, how you like your C8?

 

[azazel1024]

A very tiny extension of range, but performance at range is way better (as noted above). On top of that I stole the 5dBi externals from my WDR3600's (the N600 router mentioned above) to swap on to the C8 (in place of the 3dBi externals it ships with) and that further improved 2.4 and 5GHz performance by 5-20% (medium to extreme range) and 10-25% (at all ranges) respectively.

PS With my 11n clients I can't test 5GHz performance difference between the WDR3600 and Archer C8 really, as my fastest 11n only client is limited to around 85Mbps or so by its internal SDIO bus (tablet)...but the difference at range does seem to be roughly in line with what I see with 2.4GHz performance differences with my laptop (which does have an 11ac card in it...but with 2.4GHz, again its only running 11n specs as no TurboQAM). Roughly in the 15-60% > performance at distance on 5GHz. Using 11ac...totally different story. It is generally 110-250% better performance (the further away, the larger the performance delta in general).

As an example, where I am getting 16/20MB/sec (depending on shipping or 5dBi antennas) with the Archer C8, I would get about 6MB/sec with the WDR3600 on 5GHz.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I worry about network security a little when buying routers. A lot of them have backdoors that aren't published well and some aren't tested well enough, nor do they get decent firmware updates. Just something to research/consider for this purchase and moving forward.

I recently replaced my dead WRT54G with a Dlink DIR-655 (it was free for me with a gift card I had). It's a temporary wifi router for me.

You said you have multiple cat6 locations. Something you could do is use them + a POE injector to provide better coverage by using multiple APs. Ubiquiti sells these APs for like $65 each on Amazon or eBay resellers. You'd still want to hook them up to a decent router, but you could blanket your large house with multiple APs to guarantee higher throughput for not a whole lot of extra money.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...pf_rd_i=507846

Some of these come with the POE injector too so you can plug the power in somewhere convenient.

I mentioned the security first because Ubiquiti hasn't been around all that long and I always wonder how many companies have the wrong ties with the Chinese government, etc...yeah...I'm a little paranoid.