Wireless router recommendations

They couldn’t do anything to the antenna on this thing besides maybe chew the ends.

My psychopath … stuck in a box:
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Just get a normal router and put it in a closed wood cabinet or closet.

Or just go all in and install the router on a cat tower.

My router has a turn your wireless router button on the top of it. It took him maybe 8-9 months to actually trigger it. Now he does it about once a month. The next router i get will not have any buttons on the top of it.

If your cat speaks English in a human-like voice I would also caution you to avoid the Alexa-enabled routers too.

I’ve gone through a ton of high end routers, but we have an Orbi plus satellite and I’ve stopped looking. First router I’ve had that gives me 100% speed anywhere in the house, on the back deck, in the sunroom extension, etc. It doesn’t have a ton of settings like my high end ASUS routers but I don’t miss them.

How long have you had it? And they don’t really do wired plus wireless well… Right?

Looking at Amazon: I got it November of 2016. Like I said, I used to research and buy new routers and APs it seems like every year. but don’t feel the need now.

As far as wired, maybe I don’t understand the question, but I have my Dish Hopper 3 wired directly to it, and everything else is connected via wireless, don’t see any issues.

I’m probably not making a lot of sense but I probably have around oh 16 devices wired or so, and using two switches as well as the router. I’ve not heard a lot of good feedback for wired devices is on these mesh networks but I’ve created a Netgear mesh with the EX7700… but it loses connections sometimes.

I am probably on a 1-2 year cycle of router myself, mostly due to odd things just… happening. I want my wired stuff though.

If you find yourself upgrading so frequently, and aren’t afraid of networking administration, I heartily recommend my full-on Ubiquiti Unifi enterprise-ish setup. It’s a bit of effort to configure and requires either a separate computer/raspberry pi or a cloudkey to run their controller software, but is nigh-infinitely customizable and will fix any problems you might have.

I left the consumer space because I wanted to setup VLANs to segment my network from various IoT devices. I had a bunch of scripts on my Asus router to do that with robocfg but they were a pain in the ass to maintain, and the VLAN configuration on my cheap TPlink managed routers was really difficult to configure. Unifi makes it all easy. You do pay for that power and convenience, though.

This is how I have Plume set up. I have three nodes daisy-chained on Ethernet to the router. Two of those have switches connected to them. Then I have other nodes spread around in various rooms. Occasionally I will have a device that is a bit slow to pick up a faster connection, particularly when it is a device I don’t use often. But generally, it all just works.

But if you are into monkeying with lots of settings and stuff, this isn’t for you.

Yeah, sounds like @stusser is a better guide than I would be for your needs. My biggest issue was getting coverage from my cable modem in a downstairs corner bedroom all over a two story house with off the back of the house sunroom and deck - just Dish equipment, PS4. Rokus, notebook computers, phones, iPads, etc.

See. I don’t like monkeying with anything. Years ago the only time I had to screw with my router was to get into ports so I play my freaking games which Steam… mostly fixed.

Now I have the 2.4 an the 5.0 wireless networks as well as the wired which I normally don’t have to screw with.

This morning i almost chucked my brand new Google Home Hub through the windows because it wouldn’t connect, but it turns out the device was not the problem. My 5.0 stopped giving out IP addresses. After a firmware update, hard resets on the routers and the modem (on one of them is pass through) only two devices didn’t work, my desktop, wired and my phone, wireless. Those seemed fine after hard resets. Oh the mesh extender needed a reset for who knows what reason.

The problem is, when this kind of stuff, to put it nicely, starts happening that usually means I am halfway through the door of replacing the router again which may be the source of the problem. I just replaced this like last year but if I load a website and there is a two second delay saying there is no access and then pops up…

ARGH!

So If I wake up say tomorrow and nothing works, I am asking myself… should I try something different cause this replacement thing is really a pain for the wireless devices.

I’m mostly a DIY kind of lady. If I didn’t Google a solution and it’s not in the manual, then I probably know nothing about it.

I just want my shit to work," things in the office, wired except the work laptop, living room wired, everything else, wireless. Oh and a guest network because no tower hits here well except Verizon and all my friends complain about it during game night. Wifi fixes that too.

Plume might work for you, then. They have actually been adding new stuff, steadily, including multiple guest network configs. They even have some port forwarding and ip reservation stuff now.

I’ll research both these set-ups then, Plume and Ubiquiti. What happened this morning is definitely not normal, and it’s highly unlikely it’s the fault of handful of devices. This is my back-up router, so before I go get me another one so I can work on any particular day, I should consider plan b, something different. Changes these out every 1-2 years is not getting easier.

If you want something that “just works”, an enterprise setup like mine is not the right choice.

Well just works is probably not the right word I am looking for. I am not an average consumer, but I think my needs are pretty normalish. I have devices. I want fast access to the internet for all of them. Yes. I will play a game, stream a movie and expected everything else to get their notifications, email pictures and cameras… all at the same time. The game and movie though should have precedence. I don’t care if Alexa takes an extra minute to tell me the box on the table has arrived.

I don’t want anything to interfere with my gaming, and because people get in “moods” sometimes old games are downloaded and played which means ports are still a thing. I hosted an ARK dedicated server for a minute which only taught me how much I dislike toying with the that game and how much I really dislike Linux.

Yeah don’t get Ubiquiti. Coming from someone who almost did and considers themselves at least as technical as stusser.

haha, well that’s scary. I really don’t want a second job for my network needs.