Linksys WRT32X Gaming Router

[HEXUS]

Killer Networking Technology makes its way to the router.

Read more.

[3dcandy]

£300 is the problem here...
Now if they managed to get it down to say £200 a huge host of people might be interested

[DanceswithUnix]

Now if they managed to get it down to say £200 a huge host of people might be interested

Would they? This is just a QoS setup, so by bothering to read the manual on your existing router you could get similar results. At least there is some point to this product though, unlike the motherboard NICs.

[virtuo]

You must be terrible if it comes to blaming your router for being pants at games, or thinking one will improve anything more than pausing your torrents before starting CS:GO

My 5 year old belkin something-or-other gets me sub 16ms most of the time, and has QoS on board for prioritizing traffic.

[Stu C]

A couple of statements in the review warrant a raised eyebrow!

the WRT32X is a chunky unit whose aggressive stance is offset by an all-black colour scheme

Since when does an all-black colour scheme counterbalance an "aggressive stance"???

The difference is even more pronounced when gaming via WiFi, and though casual gamers may not feel the need to maintain low latency at all times, enthusiast gamers will no doubt appreciate the benefit.

Do enthusiast gamers play over wifi?

[peterb]

A couple of statements in the review warrant a raised eyebrow!

the WRT32X is a chunky unit whose aggressive stance is offset by an all-black colour scheme

Since when does an all-black colour scheme counterbalance an "aggressive stance"???

I shall now look at my all black Draytek 2920 router in a new light (if I can find it tucked away somewhere in the depths of the room where out of sight is out of mind).

Hope it doesn't start becoming too aggressive!

[SUMMONER]

How can that possibly be a gaming router, it has no RGB LEDs ! ¡ ? ¿

[Jace007]

Any recommendation for top 3 best routers on the market ? Budget of £190 to £250.

[Mapester]

Any recommendation for top 3 best routers on the market ? Budget of £190 to £250.

Dunno what the current best ones are but I'm still using my N66u with Tomato Toastman which does all my Qos needs.

Or you could make ur own router and run Pfsense

[rainman]

Why wasn't this compared to the Asus RT-AC5300? The Asus is about £35 cheaper, triband with 1x 2.4Ghz and 2x 5Ghz radio providing 4 x QAM-1024 streams over both 5Ghz radios. Combined gives 5334 Mbps. It is literally the pinnacle of what is available on 802.11ac, and this Linksys effort is WAY overpriced for what it is and isn't even in the same ballpark.

Also, ever since Belkin bought Linksys from Cisco in 2013 I wouldn't touch their products with a bargepole, ever since their routers did man-in-the-middle advertising spam. Cold day in hell before their products touch my network. Not to mention Belkin previously being exposed for paying for reviews.

[rainman]

Any recommendation for top 3 best routers on the market ? Budget of £190 to £250.

Asus RT-AC5300 currently £265 if you shop around. There isn't another comparable router on the market - well there is but not from brands that I could recommend or that you'd trust connected to your home network.

[DanceswithUnix]

Any recommendation for top 3 best routers on the market ? Budget of £190 to £250.

It depends very much on how you intend to use it.

Comparing a cheap Zyxel and a high end Draytek I didn't get much difference in performance on my FTTC vdsl connection or overall throughput to wired clients. There may have been some difference in the WiFi, I don't know I personally turn all that off which makes most of the hardware in these high end routers completely pointless expense for me.

I live in a house built in the 70's so it has lots of brick walls and the router has to be by the front door which is a stupid place for WiFI coverage. To get good coverage I run a pair of these cheap business grade access points on opposite corners of the house (TP-Link AC1750): https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M7WS3IF

If you live in a flat then I'm sure one of the standard routers would work fine, but I know plenty of people who try and run boosters for WiFi to get coverage in the whole house, mine works lovely.

I should go back to the Draytek but I had a wrinkle in setting it up to do with DMZ configuration (so most people wouldn't see that) and just plugged the Zyxel back in as that worked. One of these days I will bother to work out how the Draytek should be configured, that's me not the router I'm sure. This is not a recommendation for Zyxel btw, it was the "free" router from my ISP and the cheapness shows.

[Taniniver]

I own one of these so I'll add something with my experience of it.

First the context - I'm gaming on a desktop PC via a wired connection, with killer NIC. My ISP is Virgin Media, 100 megabit connection, and prior to getting the WRT32X I was using their supplied modem/router, a SuperHub 2.

My online game of choice is Guild Wars 2. Latency as reported in game is generally about 40-50 ms for me, and normally all was fine even on the old SuperHub - as long as only my PC was using the internet connection.

When someone was streaming online video using a Kodi box though, or a laptop used by another family member was downloading via BitTorrent, there would be a noticeable impact on the game - latency increased to 80ms+ and spikes of 250ms and above.

If both of those things were happening at once, the game would often totally freak out - warnings flashing up about not being able to contact the login server, failing to bring up the in-game trading post, even occasional disconnects. This is despite the killer NIC in my PC having the game as top priority - other devices on the network were screwing things up.

Since I got the WRT32X all that is gone - my PC gets priority automatically based on the killer NIC priority levels, the other devices I set to medium priority. Now if someone is streaming via Kodi or using BitTorrent while I'm gaming, I can't even tell - there is no impact on the game at all.

So - this is what it's good at. It isn't going to magically improve your game, and if nothing else is using your internet connection whilst you are gaming, you don't need one. If you are gaming whilst other devices are competing for the internet connection though, it makes a huge difference.

[jimbouk]

So - this is what it's good at. It isn't going to magically improve your game, and if nothing else is using your internet connection whilst you are gaming, you don't need one. If you are gaming whilst other devices are competing for the internet connection though, it makes a huge difference.

QoS is pretty standard these days on mid range routers though. It's even an option on my crummy EE Brightbox. I imagine setting your computer / game with the highest QoS prioritisation and everything else lower would have a very similar effect to buying a £300 router that does the same thing.

[DanceswithUnix]

QoS might be fairly standard, but I have to wonder how well it would really work. It is easy to prioritise outgoing traffic, but incoming packets you have to take as they come, and it is incoming bandwidth that you usually saturate first.

[rainman]

I own one of these so I'll add something with my experience of it.

First the context - I'm gaming on a desktop PC via a wired connection, with killer NIC. My ISP is Virgin Media, 100 megabit connection, and prior to getting the WRT32X I was using their supplied modem/router, a SuperHub 2.

You're effectively comparing a Ford Mondeo with a Trabant. Of course it's going to be better. I was a beta tester for VM 100Mb service and the Superhub was a major Achilles heel as it was originally specced high when Netgear was commissioned to make it, but when the costs came back they slashed the feature set and turned it into an absolute turd. People were crying out for "bridge mode" to disable the router entirely and just use it as a modem, which eventually they enabled after we'd done much testing of the firmware.

Originally VM supplied a dedicated DOCSIS modem and a DLink router. The crappy DLink router (which they replaced with the Superhub) was a basic but superior device with considerably less latency.