Help me choose a wireless router for my home

Question

WiFi

Considering my very poor experience in using such devices, I can’t rely solely on the specifications, because, as practice shows, some important things are not fully indicated there, and behavioral features in practice and pitfalls are even more so.

It all started 2 years ago, when a "cool network specialist" advised me to buy a D-Link DIR-400. I was immediately imbued with the buggyness of this piece of iron, the DD-WRT firmware partially helped, but far from solved all the problems. The description of all the jambs of this router is worthy of an entire article.
Some time later, I bought an external 1 TB USB drive, which brought some more inconvenience: using it with two computers implies that the distributor is on.
A month ago, the number and quality of glitches began to increase, and 2 days ago it happened - D-Link gave his soul to God, which I'm basically glad about: I really wanted to change it for something decent for a long time, but the toad pressed, because he like, but did the job.

Based on the current situation, I am looking for a decent piece of iron with the following characteristics (in order of priority):
- excellent stability.
- the ability to connect an external USB to the home subnet on a non-competitive basis. Support for a decent file system is very important here: ideally, NTFS, as a variant of ext. I don’t want FAT32 or some kind of proprietary one, like Buffalo’s XFS.
- good WAN<>LAN, LAN<>LAN speed.
- processor at least 300 MHz. 186 MHz on the DIR-400 did not allow me to fully enjoy the 75 Mbit/s channel.
- the ability to configure a torrent client directly on the router.
— 802.11n. While this is not necessary, but for the future - a nice bonus.

I would like to pay for a piece of iron in the region of $ 100. Monsters for 200 and above do not allow me to buy my toad.

Answer 1

Wow, this has been discussed so many times here. Search Q&A.
From myself I will advise TL-WR1043ND, I took myself one recently. All ports are gigabit, support wi-fi n, 400 MHz, dd-wrt, openwrt are supported. Yesterday I screwed a whistle from Megafon to it as a backup link, but you can also connect a printer and a USB flash drive to this USB port (on the off-firmware only a hard / flash drive / printer, modems are not supported).
It works stably (I installed dd-wrt right away, however, some people complain about off-firmware), no hardware problems were noticed.
Price 2500 wooden.

Answer 2

Probably the ideal option would be Netgear WNR3500L. Official support for DD-WRT, no stability issues, pretty powerful (for a router) hardware.
Price $100-120.

Answer 3

I recommend linksys equipment - I overpaid a little at one time and bought this one http://market.yandex.ru/model.xml?hid=723087&modelid=2066198
So I have had it for 2 years and it works very well.
I did not notice any hangups or disconnections.
But this is already an old man model compared to newer models.
For myself, I already clearly understood that in the future I would take only linksys for myself.
Regarding the speed, it is better to buy a directional antenna if you clearly know where the PC will be.
For example, the router is in the hallway, and there is a PC in the living room.
And so in a two-room apartment, I squeeze out 50 Mbps freely, though for more speed you need to take a model a little more powerful. I just don't have internet for that many Mbps.
Torrents are well configured on linksys.
But there is no model with USB in this model, you need to look at something alternative.
I just shared my experience with this model.

Answer 4

I have been using Asus RT-N16 for half a year, at first there were jambs, after flashing it seemed to settle down. Spinning FTP, print server.

Answer 5

ASUS RT-N56U costs ~ 200 Mbps and can:
> 700Mbps wan-lan
> 10 MB/s NAS acces (~100 mbps)
this means that in your case you need to find orphan hardware and install a router on a freight or Linux with gigabit ports.
performance (R/W HDD, routing) will be many times better.
if you can do it, you can write an article with graphs and results

Answer 6

I advise ZyXEL Keenetic , fits all the characteristics you need, easy to set up, stable, in general, a fairy tale. I have one, I bought it, plugged it in and forgot, it works like a clock.

Answer 7

Dlink 825. Very powerful. DD-WRT is installed.

Answer 8

I had the same situation - there was an old Trendnet, it slowed down, there was little functionality, but it seemed like there was no need to change it. But one day he suddenly took and died.
As a result, I chose for a long time between Asus RT-N16 and Netgear 3500L, I took Netgear (cheaper, the functionality is not worse, and I also liked the design and the absence of external antennas - the design requirements were set by my wife :)).
For 3 months now, I have been completely satisfied - absolutely stable work, never hung, completely skips the 100 Mbit / s channel, covers the entire apartment without problems via Wi-Fi, and with direct visibility with a laptop (802.11n) gives real speed for a hundred megabits. Internet from the provider via PPPoE, plus local resources - everything works perfectly. A flash drive is connected to the USB, FTP + DynDNS is raised, as a result, from anywhere at any time there is access to your small file storage. All this on native firmware. For the future, you can put an alternative one, and there is a print server, and a torrent, etc.

Answer 9

Just in case, I want to warn you that Netgear WNR3500L has certain problems with pppoe/pptp/l2tp with standard firmware
forum.netgear.ru/viewtopic.php?id=1548

Answer 10

A description of all the jambs of this router is worthy of an entire article
. Describe the jambs, it's interesting! It is interesting because I myself have been using DIR-400 for a year and a half and have not met any jambs. It turns out that I have zero experience using a router. :)
It would be interesting to read what you should pay attention to (after all, this one will someday still be covered). Thank you!

Answer 11

I bought an Asus RT-N16 router the other day. Everything is great, the screw shakes torrents on the usb, but the speed of the usb connector is depressing. There was a maximum of 5 megabytes / s via FTP, and 10 megabytes / s is pouring from the Internet, it's easier to download to a stationary PC. But for media players I think this speed is not a problem. But the price of 4500 rubles is beyond your budget.