Looking for a new router

[Sighbot]

Ever since I got my Netgear R6300 router I have had nothing but issues. Connections dropping regularly, inconsistent performance, poor range. It finally crapped out on me this morning so I am looking for a replacement and thought I would post here to see people thought about the 3 routers I am looking at.

I work from home using Citrix remote desktop access and would like to connect my office computer connected through wifi. Due to the regular connection drops with the R6300 I have had a ethernet cable running across half the house to my office and I would really like to get rid of it.

Devices my family would be connecting with in each room are:
Room 1: same room as router, wired, PC and XBOX 360
Room 2: Home theater. Adjacent room, same floor as router. TV, Xbox One, AV receiver, blu ray player all via wifi. Lots of netflix/vudu and music streaming.
Room 3: Living room. One floor down, 2 rooms over from router. Blu ray player used mainly for netflix via wifi.
Office 1: located one floor directly over the room with the router, wifi, PC and wifi printer, heavy use. PC is also a media PC that the Xbox 360 watches HDTV through windows media center.
Office 2: located one floor down and 2 room over from router. 2 PC's, wifi, light use.
There are also 4 cell phones in the house that connect.

I would like something that is stable, with decent range for the cell phones and fast enough for 2 simultaneous Netflix streams over Wifi.

The routers I was looking at are the Linksys WRT1900AC, Netgear Nighthawk R7000 and the Asus RT-AC68U.

Since this is technically needed for work, my employer is allowing me to send them the bill so the price difference between the 3 really isn't an issue.

Any advice on which would would be best would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Sighbot]

I got a little impatient last night and went with the WRT1900AC. Got it hooked up and connected everything without any issues.

The built quality is great. It just feels like a high end device. The range is much better than the old R6300 it replaced. Also, I woke up this morning and my phone didn't have a message on it saying "your internet connection is unstable". That hasn't happened in a while.

So far I have no complaints.

 

[Adrianime]

Sighbot, I'm thinking of picking up the WRT1900AC tonight. How have you liked it? Does it broadcast to multiple floors in your house without issue?

 

[Sighbot]

After more than a month of use, I have no regrets. The unexpected disconnects I was getting with the previous R6300 router have vanished and I was able to eliminate the annoying ethernet cable leading from the router to my office computer.

I would say the range is good but keep in mind that I only have the R6300 to compare it to which I was not impressed with. The 5 ghz band I would guess is almost double what I was getting with the R6300, the 2.4 ghz band is a little better but very comparable.

I live on a lake and have been fishing from my dock a lot in the past month. The router is on the second floor in the front of the house and the dock is out the back across the yard. At this range the signal was passing through 3 interior walls, 1 exterior wall, 40 ft of yard and another 25 ft to the end of the dock. Signal was obviously struggling here. I hooked up an old wifi extender on the back wall of the house and I now truly have good coverage everywhere I would need it.

 

[Adrianime]

Thanks Sighbot. I bought the WRT1900AC last night. The coverage and internet are great. No complaints there. MY intranet file transfer speeds are limited by 2.4GHz wireless N (what my wireless devices can handle), and I am getting 2 to 5 MBytes/s. I was really hoping to get 30+ MB/s over wireless n, but I don't even think that is possible.

I completely know that if I wired everything, my speeds would be blazing fast, but only my main PC is wired. And I just can't have wires running all over the house.

Have you paid much attention to your wireless n file transfer speeds (between devices)? Are you using the 2.4 Ghz or the 5 Ghz?

 

[Sighbot]

The only devices I have connected via 2.4 ghz are a couple cell phones and a wireless blu ray player so I am not sure what the actual file transfer speeds are. I have read that this router is not the best when it comes to the 2.4 ghz band though. 2-5 MBytes/s does sound low. When I first got the router I did notice that my bandwidth tests for internet speed were only around 30 mbps even though my provider is 100 mbps. That was with media prioritization on in the router settings, turning that off brought everything up to 50 mbps+ and my office computer at the full 100 mbps which is one floor above the router. May want to give that a shot.

Over wireless AC I am able to easily stream HD video live TV through Windows Media Center between two PC's both using Asus PCI-E adapters which did not work out hardly at all with the old router.

If you are not using any devices that can connect at wireless AC, let alone 5 ghz, this may not have been the best router for your uses. But keep in mind that I am no expert on the matter.

 

[Adrianime]

Yes, I realized only after my purchase that I have no 5 Ghz or AC devices currently. But I'm loving the router so far (much better than my WRT54G) and at least now I know what to look for when I purchase my next Device!

Thanks for the tips!