looking at routers

[Domestic_Ginger]

Currently using a ADSL WiFi router free from plusnet and the wife and I are of the opinion its white. We had a dg834(?) which was fine before they upgraded our line to ADSL+.

The asus routers look nice (missed the one which went recently) but I was wondering exactly what I need. I Ethernet into the box but appear to suffer packet loss a lot while gaming and someone else is using the router. I assume QoS will help with this. We run up to three laptops and a tablet off wifi.

Are there any good used models around from the last 4 years or so I could look into if only to build up a good eBay search string? What exactly I looking for apart from QoS and gigabit?

[BobF64]

I'm using the ASUS RT-N66U with the Merlin firmware, albeit on Plusnet fibre not ADSL+.

Ive had several devices all running over it without issue.

[Dareos]

Currently using a ADSL WiFi router free from plusnet and the wife and I are of the opinion its white.

bit of cockney rhyming slang there?

[MrJim]

I'm using the ASUS RT-N66U with the Merlin firmware, albeit on Plusnet fibre not ADSL+.

Ive had several devices all running over it without issue.

I'm using exactly the same - also on Plusnet!

[pp05]

Currently using a ADSL WiFi router free from plusnet and the wife and I are of the opinion its white. We had a dg834(?) which was fine before they upgraded our line to ADSL+.

The asus routers look nice (missed the one which went recently) but I was wondering exactly what I need. I Ethernet into the box but appear to suffer packet loss a lot while gaming and someone else is using the router. I assume QoS will help with this. We run up to three laptops and a tablet off wifi.

Are there any good used models around from the last 4 years or so I could look into if only to build up a good eBay search string? What exactly I looking for apart from QoS and gigabit?

I would say avoid Asus.

If you have devices compatible with ac then consider adding that in. Ultimately, things haven't moved to far in the router department other than adding in cloud services and allowing you to share a usb hard disk over the network. Save your money and get a regular N router.

[pp05]

I'm using the ASUS RT-N66U with the Merlin firmware, albeit on Plusnet fibre not ADSL+.

Ive had several devices all running over it without issue.

Same here, have you got it working with port forwarding? I've had hassle with wireless of late.

[Domestic_Ginger]

bit of cockney rhyming slang there?

Cockney spellchecker.

Thanks chaps its coming along. I'll post a string if I can come up with one.

[BobF64]

Same here, have you got it working with port forwarding? I've had hassle with wireless of late.

Hmm, can't say I've tried, surely its just a case of forwarding a port from the WAN to the LAN?

[MrJim]

Same here, have you got it working with port forwarding? I've had hassle with wireless of late.

Which programs are you forwarding ports for? I've not needed to do it myself, but it shouldn't be all that difficult, once you've established which ports to forward?

[bobhope2005]

You could try a Draytek Vigor 2830n?

Bit more expense but so feature rich. Dual WAN capabilities as well so if you ever decide to go cable etc then you've already got the hardware. (or you could have both and never have an internet outage again! - perfect if you want to run your own home servers.)

Its definitely overkill for the average home user but if you want to be able to control your house's internet usage, have multiple vlans, multiple SSD's, QOS, VPN and traffic management plus so much more then check it out.

[TeaLeaf]

Another vote for Draytek, had several of them and they are particularly good and very highly configurable. Using mine on fibre (FTTH) here and it handles the speed perfectly, multiple VPNs, excellent wireless and bespoke port forwarding & firewall configs.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Billion and draytek are a couple of good brands. I'm more concerned that the worse the styling and greater resemblance to a late 80s games console; the stronger the router!

[TeaLeaf]

I have a Billion 7800n in another location and it does very well too. Wireless performance seemed particularly strong too iirc.