I should have upgraded a long time ago.

[suschnauzer]

I was one of the early adopters of the D-Link DIR-655. It served me well for many years attached to the crappy cable modem provided by Time Warner; yes the one I was paying $7/month for. We live in a newer, large colonial house. My son has had a laptop, PC, and a PS3 in his bedroom, on the second floor, all wirelessly connected to the network. He would frequently complain about dropped connections and just overall poor wireless performance. We did a lot of research online and tried many tweaks to the D-Link without great success.

In the past 6 months I purchased an Apple TV; which I love. I also got a subscription to Netflix. Well, here is where my network started to show its age. Streaming HD videos from Netflix was painful. Buffering, poor video quality, etc. Streaming live video from the ESPN app was even more painful. I am a big College BB fan and use the app frequently.

I started researching routers online. After a month, I chose to go with the Asus RT-AC68R, the big box store version of the RT-AC68U. Actually, Bestbuy made the choice easy for me as for 1 day they offered a $100 discount on the router! I purchased it for $120 + tax and got another 5% back through ShopDiscover. In the meantime, I worked out a deal on my current Time Warner service. I picked up phone service and was upgraded to Turbo internet just by threatening to leave them; I am saving $50/month to boot!

After the upgrade to turbo internet, I kept checking my internet speed for days and noticed I was still at the standard internet speed. After calling Time Warner, and spending much time on the phone with tech support, it was brought to my attention that their POS cable modem did not support turbo internet. They offered to upgrade the modem. They also said I could purchase my own modem; it would also save me $7/month. More research. I went with the Motorola SB6141. Staples made it easy this time. $70 + tax AC and PM to Target.

Fast forward, and Wow! What a difference the new hardware has made! No more dropped signals or poor wireless anywhere in the house. In fact, I get a wired quality connection in every room. Netflix streams in full HD without a hitch. Family movie night is now a pleasure. No more complaining from anyone. I can stream live HD video from the ESPN app with no issue. I have a 5GHz network and a 2.4GHz network set up. The Apple TV, smart phones, and iPad are on the 5GHz network. Everything else is on the 2.4GHz network.

Needless to say I am a happy camper! Just thought I'd share.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's a really great story. I cannot fathom why so many people are still using those old LinkSys/Cisco WRT54G-series routers. They are old, slow, and decrepit. Some of the brighter users are using them with DD-WRT, which is commendable, but as internet speeds "everywhere" are trending upwards of 20Mbit/sec, those old routers really run out of stream as far as their WAN-to-LAN performance.

Even a $20 refurb Netgear WNR2000v2 (which is also Broadcom-based, and can run DD-WRT like a champ), will handle 100Mbit WAN-to-LAN I believe, or nearly so. (I have a friend using one, and he has scored as high as 83Mbit/sec down on speedtests, on Comcast's Blast! service tier.)

These newer routers from Asus, and most of the AC routers on the market, can handle Gigabit WAN-to-LAN (for those lucky enough to have Google Fiber or the like).

I'm still rocking a Cisco E2500 refurb router with Tomato firmware, using only the 2.4Ghz (because non of my laptops support 5Ghz). I get 50Mbit/sec out of it, with a FIOS 50/25 connection (that tests at 58/39).

Before that, I was using some WNR2000v2 units with DD-WRT myself. Before that, WNR834Bv2, and before that, well, I don't really recall.

In the ancient past, I too used a WRT54G, and a Linksys wireless-G USB adaptor. (Until I managed to pick up a Motorola-flavored Broadcom G router, which had a beta firmware that supported WDS mode, and would interface with the WRT54G's stock firmware, that supported "Lazy WDS" in the wifi driver, but had no UI exposed to use the WDS mode. That was all before I learned about DD-WRT and 3rd-party firmware.)

 

[JackMDS]

Yeah, Networking is Not about knowledge.

Buy a Lotto, bet on few horses to stimulate the Luck glands.

Put some money here and there get few rebates, and ding One is set.

 

[s44]

Tomato for ARM routers including the AC68 is pretty far along already.

 

[RU482]

Did the same upgrade, having the same joy

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Another vote for the Netgear WNR2000v2. Got a crap-ton of them (IINM ~12x) for ridiculously cheap at the local TigerDirect, all running DD-WRT like champs.
I'm not a particularly heavy user / picky about wireless, so the 2.4GHz 802.11n on the Netgear suffices.

Can't fathom paying $$$ for gigabit ports on the router/WAP when it is going to be hooked up to dedicated gigabit switches anyway.

 

[fishar]

Same thing except I switched awhile back with the AC66U. Love Asus

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I still use a DIR-655 from 2006 and added an Amped Wireless repeater last year. Additionally, I'm using a DAP-1522 to provide coverage of my patio. The Amped Wireless works superbly and covers all of the house and most (but not all) of the patio.

I've been considering ordering the Netgear Nighthawk or the Asus AC68U just to see if perhaps I could cover the entire house and the patio with it if I placed the router strategically. I really don't like running three separate devices now (and hence, 3 separate networks). I guess one concern I have is that I really don't need all of the fancy router features -- I've deployed a Sophos UTM install as my home firewall so I really just need an AC AP with large coverage rather than paying for all the router bells and whistles.

Can't fathom paying $$$ for gigabit ports on the router/WAP when it is going to be hooked up to dedicated gigabit switches anyway.

Depends on your internet connection speed. Speeds faster than 100 Mb/s are becoming reality for many folks, so a 10/100 connection on the router would actually be the bottleneck. My ISP currently offers a 90 Mb/s package and I'm sure it won't be along before we see even faster speeds.