When HN users recommended it
2 HN users recommended this between 2018 and 2021, in 3 comments.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
2 HN users recommended this between 2018 and 2021, in 3 comments.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
This will depend on what kind of Internet connection you have, or expect to have in the future. Gigabit internet connections are becoming more common here in the US, and some lower powered devices just can't route packets faster than say 100-200 Mbit/s.
I can tell you what I did, which may or may not be helpful to you. I got Linksys WRT AC3200[0]. The "AC3200" bit refers to a type of wifi 802.11ac configuration that has a theoretical bandwidth of 600 Mbit/s using the 2.4Ghz radio (good for distance and passing through interior walls) and 2.6 Gbit/s on the 5Ghz wifi radio. This is not the fastest or fanciest of the 802.11ac configurations, but it's up there.
One note about the marketing of this device, the MU-MIMO feature that you may read about is not really a thing yet. I don't have any devices that support it, and it's possible I never will.
Disregarding the radios entirely, this device can easily push 1 Gbit/s over the the ethernet ports, and can easily exceed 800 Mbit/s using the up-and-coming Linux kernel based VPN WireGuard.
This device is supported by OpenWRT, but if you don't want to compile and build it yourself you need to get it from a helpful guy on the net who maintains community builds for this router[1] and related chipsets. Support is available through a community forum[2].
I'm quite pleased with this device and firmware setup. I like that it can interface with my switch to sort out VLAN tags, I like that I can run cutting edge VPN software like WireGuard on it, I like that it's reliable and I haven't hard to reboot it randomly to "fix" it.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE
[1]: https://davidc502sis.dynamic-dns.net/releases/#3200acm
[2]: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/davidc502-wrt1200ac-wrt1900acx-w...
If you still want to live that WRT life with something like OpenWRT/LEDE (I think they re-merged now just under OpenWRT but I'm running LEDE currently) then I can highly recommend this [0] updated version. I have it and I can get gigabit speeds (wired) through it just fine and don't have any issues with the wireless other than at the far, far end of my house and only sometimes.
My next router will probably be a Ubiquity setup so I can setup 2-3 AP's for full coverage and coverage out to the (detached) garage but that setup is not cheap or simple and my current issues are so minor that it will be a while before I pull the trigger on that.
[0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/
Can confirm this router can handle gigabit ISP speeds, I upgraded to this specifically because my previous router (also flashed with OpenWRT) couldn't get my full speeds I was paying for.
Here it is on Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOXW3YE/