router is dying.... need options

[mcveigh]

My TP-link Archer C9 is dying, I've had it a few years and was happy with it.The past few months I will suddenly lose the wireless signal or, it will freeze up for just a few seconds, but enough to disrupt netflix/amazon and it really drives my wife crazy when she's printing something to the wireless printer and it just goes nuts. I even installed DD-WRT and the issue remains. I did find some reports of this being a known hardware issue with this broadcom chipset. That doesn't explain why this started the past few months though.

I've got 600 downstream from my ISP. I'm leaning towards just getting a Netgear R7000, but I've heard good things about Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO as well.

Any ideas?

 

[XavierMace]

The UAP-AC-PRO isn't a router, it's just an access point meaning you'd still need a router. Depending what your budget is, Ubiquiti Edge Router + AC PRO's is a good setup, just not cheap. Or a Sophos UTM/pfSense box and some AP's.

 

[VirtualLarry]

One thing that can happen with SOHO routers, is the power brick gets flaky, and the wireless speed / distance decreases. The router may also need to be reset / rebooted regularly.

I run a lot of refurbished SOHO / consumer networking gear, usually with third-party firmware. It generally is stable, but I've had flakiness that wasn't there initially when I started using that gear (generally 2-3 years later), that often was resolved with new power bricks. Granted, at the price I paid for the entire router, refurb, the power brick cost on ebay for a "new" one could be significant enough, that you might just want to buy a whole new refurb router.

 

[ch33zw1z]

The UAP-AC-PRO isn't a router, it's just an access point meaning you'd still need a router. Depending what your budget is, Ubiquiti Edge Router + AC PRO's is a good setup, just not cheap. Or a Sophos UTM/pfSense box and some AP's.

Edge router is about $55, ac-pro is $130, I use a uap-ac-lr $95

R7000 is $170

About the same

 

[smitbret]

My TP-link Archer C9 is dying, I've had it a few years and was happy with it.The past few months I will suddenly lose the wireless signal or, it will freeze up for just a few seconds, but enough to disrupt netflix/amazon and it really drives my wife crazy when she's printing something to the wireless printer and it just goes nuts. I even installed DD-WRT and the issue remains. I did find some reports of this being a known hardware issue with this broadcom chipset. That doesn't explain why this started the past few months though.

I've got 600 downstream from my ISP. I'm leaning towards just getting a Netgear R7000, but I've heard good things about Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO as well.

Any ideas?

If it's just the wireless that is giving you problems then pick up something inexpensive to use as an AP and just disable the wireless on the C9.

VirtualLarry may be spot on, too. Try a new power brick and see if the problems go away. Bad PSUs make things glitchy in a router just like a bad PSU makes things glitchy in a PC.

I have an R7000 running Advanced Tomato that replaced my Archer C7. They perform the same. If you don't need anything more than what you were getting with the C9 then I wouldn't spend the money on an R7000. At one point I had a C7, a T-Mobile Cell Spot that I flashed to Asus RT-AC68U and an R7000. I spent a couple of days testing WiFi coverage and network throughput tests (wired and wireless) and I couldn't find any difference between the three. At one point in my house, the RT-AC68U got 1db better on the 5Ghz band but that was somewhere extreme (like -80 vs. -81, I don't remember exactly). The only reason I went with the R7000 was so I could flash Advanced Tomato on it and use the router as the Master Browser for my SAMBA network otherwise I would still be using the C7.

 

[mcveigh]

Thanks everyone! If I can find the time I might just try a new power supply first.

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