I know we have a lot of budget aware tech guys here, so figured it is a good place to ask.
Long story short, I was stuck with 10/100 networking up until around the start of the year. I then found a router for $20 so I upgraded to wireless AC and gigabit.
While it is a massive improvement it has shortcomings. Weak wifi coverage and slow USB port being the biggest ones.
I have an external drive connected to the router as a poor mans NAS, it works ok for a budget of zero but transfer speeds are only ~30-40MB/s. Gets me by until I can afford a proper NAS but not ideal and pretty slow for big transfers and does not like being used for media server duties.
Anyone know of a good budget option for a router?
Used is fine with me as well, what I have works, just not as well as I would like.
Something that can be flashed with custom firmware later for more options would also be nice.
Just figured I would ask around here before jumping into whatever deal I run across again.
I am pretty happy with my WRT1200AC. I upgraded from an old Asus with DDWRT flashed to it (converted the Asus to a target camera system, with an old foscam camera). I wanted 5ghz and it does well with that (down 2 floors to the basement and across the house (about 100’ through a few walls). I don’t use the usb port, but it has complete control of it, if needed.
The nighthawks were tempting, but I grabbed this one for under $150, IIRC. Budget, compared to the rest of the market.
It’s been running nonstop for about three years and has not had a single hiccup. I’ve got a 10 channel switch, a 5 channel switch, a plex media server, 8 channel NVR, and a bunch of other stuff connected. Wifi gives ample signal to get 1080p on 7 rokus.
Not sure if this fits the bill for you, but might be worth a look for what’s available and not bleeding-edge.
Good suggestion, Linksys has treated me well in the past, if I had to pick I would chose either an ASUS or linksys. Neither has let me down.
Ebay prices on that model are pretty good as well, less then $50 appears to be fairly easy to come by, which was my target budget that I forgot to mention earlier.
If anyone else has suggestions feel free to let me know, I am not in a major rush on this, just looking for some targets to keep an eye out for a good deal on.
Searching ebay for used routers comes up with too many choices to know which ones are good and which ones are not.
Hey! Something I know something about! I recently upgraded my router, and per my norm I bought a whole bunch, evaluated, and then sold the rest.
In the last month I’ve owned
NETGEAR
R6400
R7000
R7900
R8000
Linksys
E8350
Asus
AC-68U
My findings are that Linksys has gone way downhill recently with buggy firmware and very short-lived support.
Netgear supports their products longer but the firmware can also be buggy in some cases.
The Asus firmware is far and away the best. All the stability of something like DD-WRT or OpenWRT, but with a fantastic interface and support.
I did not try any TP-Link. I have had good products from them in the past, but after the Archer C7/C8 they have begun to be less friendly towards 3rd-party firmware.
Right now I’m left with what is shown in the 2nd picture: the R7000 (which has the excellent Asus firmware installed on it and will be sold to a friend), the R8000 (also with Asus firmware, which works well on both), and the Asus Ac68u.
I’m happy with all of their performance, but I would only recommend something with the Asus firmware. It is just so superior to everything else I’ve tried. Both the R7000 and R8000 are decently stable, but little features like the DLNA server just would not work on the stock firmware.
I am a TP-link fan because if you open them up…. they produce their own asics, and they are really fast. Gig port to gig port the throughput is amazing and at layer 3 they are very fast. DD-WRT is in dev for the C3150.
I also recommend the ac66u given your budget, as Asus tends to hold theur resale value higher than others. I forgot to mention I had one of those for a week too
My only gripe is that it has a single-core processor, so using the usb storage tends to slow down the router. If you don’t use the storage server function, it’s quite good. It also had better range than all but the R8000 in my tests
Interesting, sadly that model looks to be going for $80+ which is more then I would really like to spend if possible. Although if there are tangible gains for the money I pay for better performance.
Asus firmware only works on a few Netgear models; most successfully on the R7000. If you’re fine with installing other firmwares, they can be had for $50. You don’t get 100% of the Asus features though.
The ac68u is the better bet imo. You’ll have to check if they’re compatible if you want DD-WRT, but I don’t have any need for it after using Asus-WRT
Hmm, at this point it looks like I will be using the storage server function right now unless I find a NAS for cheap. Although they are hard to find. So I guess trying to find the AC68U might be better.
Or if those netgear models work well and can run the asus firmware (same guts inside?), that might be the way to go.
I considered doing this but the lowest power PC I could build/find in my stable was around 50-60W idle power usage. I would be better off adding more drives to my main system instead of using another one. Which I have considered.
The issue with that is I turn my system off every night and restart at odd times, so I want a drive available 24/7 for certain functions. Right now I have my main media server setup on a drive in my main system.
Although a raid setup in a proper NAS would be superior naturally. The drive on the router is mostly a “swap drive” for swapping things between systems or serving up basic files 24/7. Not a lot of use but it can have large file transfers going through it.
If you’re looking at the ac68u/r/p (all basically the same), just be aware the T-mobile version takes extra work to “unlock”. It worked fine for me, but apparently not everyone is so lucky
