Routers have become awfully complex and expensive. Recommend me a good cheap one?

[stroberaver]

I'm a WRT54G user, and it is unbelievably reliable. I've had it since 2004, and it's been perfect. It didn't cost much, and everything just works. It never crashes. It never drops out.

But it's old, and only has 10/100 LAN ports and the WiFi obviously isn't going to support modern standards. So I'm trying to find out what the modern day equivalent is.

But the whole router market seems to have gone a little crazy. Endless "snazzy" feature lists - installation wizard software, built in storage, DLNA servers, fancy cases designed to look sleek. But not much evidence of real focus on stability and reliability. The prices of the most sophisticated models are astonishing, and there's good and bad user reviews of almost every model.

I don't want anything fancy, and certainly not more than £100. Something from £50-£80 would be my hope. I want a modern day WRT54G with gigabit LAN ports and modern WiFi standards. Something that you plug in, set up, and never have to tinker with again.

The Archer C7 looks like it has the kind of design ethos I'm after - good hardware & components, features only in the right places, sensible prices, but even that appears to have severe issues with 5GHz WiFi and Apple clients.

What should I buy?

Thanks in advance.

[AGTDenton]

BT Hubs go for very cheap on ebay.

Search BT Business Hub 3 or 5. Overall quite good and simple to use. They'll give you modern Wi-Fi + Gbit and certainly the BT Hub 3 supports both ADSL and Fibre not sure if the Hub 5 supports ADSL. Individuals/businesses put them up because they use their own equipment so most of them are as new.

If you want a brand new one then TP-Link are quite good on price + spec.

[guido123]

BT homehub 5

[dave87]

The Archer C7 looks like it has the kind of design ethos I'm after - good hardware & components, features only in the right places, sensible prices, but even that appears to have severe issues with 5GHz WiFi and Apple clients.

Archer C7.

I've got one running a reasonable size/speed network (it connects to my BT Infinity Service (75/18) and on the LAN side to a 24 Port Layer2 Managed Switch) and its been very stable. Not had any issues with 5ghz wireless, but I don't have any Apple devices which use the network frequently (GF's iPhone 4S isn't 5ghz compatible).

I found the BT HomeHubs to be infuriatingly slow, and not that stable. I've got one which is useful in the case of an emergency (i.e. when my last TP-Link router died after a good few years of service), but not for continued use. Particularly when it tried to discover all the devices connected on the network it fell over.

[jimbouk]

Might be good timing: http://forums.hexus.net/classifieds/...nk-3870-a.html

[MrJim]

Might be good timing: http://forums.hexus.net/classifieds/...nk-3870-a.html

I think they are all ADSL routers, the OP has Virgin cable, I believe?

[shaithis]

Can recommend the Buffalo WZR-1166DHP (and variants). Especially when flashed with DD-WRT.

My old favourite was the TP-Link 1043ND, although I haven't been following the DD-WRT developments on the new revision of the hardware (which you'd require for the newer WiFi standards).

[mycarsavw]

I had a WRT54GL and felt exactly the same way about picking a new one, but it was struggling to support more than 4 wireless devices at a time.

I hunted for a while and settled on the RT-N66U. If you don't need all the singing and dancing then the ASUS RT-N16 is a good choice and it can be flashed with Tomato or DD-WRT too.

[Zak33]

the thing I reckon a router must have, at all costs.. is the ability to run more than one VPN

the sheer amount of people working from home is high.. and you can bet you'll need at least 2 VPN's at once.. so consider that pls

[artturnip]

Another vote of confidence for TP-Link from me. I'm running the TL-WDR3600 with OpenWrt Barrier Breaker and it works an absolute charm. Support for most (if not all) advanced features and really up to you how many you want to use. For a simpler GUI you could try Gargoyle instead.

[abaxas]

Man/woman up people and learn cisco IOS.

Lots of EOL cisco stuff is cheap as chips and will do more than you ever need, almost never crash and is built like a tank.

Sod all this expensive consumer gear, buy something that you setup and forget about.

[jimborae]

Man/woman up people and learn cisco IOS.

Lots of EOL cisco stuff is cheap as chips and will do more than you ever need, almost never crash and is built like a tank.

Sod all this expensive consumer gear, buy something that you setup and forget about.

So what would you recommend, particularly thinking access points here, to improve wifi coverage around the house.

[abaxas]

It depends if you want G or N.

I use G as we live in a old house with 3 foot thick walls! Tried N and it was no faster as my laptop usually connects at 4-12mbps at the 'other side of the wall.

I use a 1841 + 1231g + another 1231g as a repeater (house is long and thin)

[dudefellow]

Man/woman up people and learn cisco IOS.

Lots of EOL cisco stuff is cheap as chips and will do more than you ever need, almost never crash and is built like a tank.

Sod all this expensive consumer gear, buy something that you setup and forget about.

I may have to have a go at this soon, especially if I get to raid the IT cupboard...

[shaithis]

Problem with Cisco stuff is every time I have looked at it you can't get it cheap with gigabit ports and (decent) wifi.
...and the last one I had didn't even do ADSL2+ correctly and gave 3/4 the speed of the a BE Thompson router.

Then there is the whole "finding IOS firmwares".....

For most people Cisco probably should be the last choice. In fact for a home router, if you really do want to go total overkill, I'd prefer a Sonicwall.

[DB007]

I'm using a ASUS RT-AC68U - the ability to setup a VPN to connect to from an external location and use my Internet connection from home via the router is brilliant. These things are not cheap but really simple to use with the graphical interface (rather than learning a Cisco IOS)

This way you also get decent firmware updates (unlike the pretty generic BT Stuff)