[SOLVED] Need new router to retire WRT 54GL

[Kisianik]

Hi

Can someone point me into the right direction.

My Lynksis 54GL DD WRT flashed router is finally (after 16+ years of perfect service) dying, looking for equal power horse under $100.

What is important. I have crappy ADSL connection now and most likely would not get anything above 50 mbps, at best, in the near future, so I don't want to loose any bandwidth to local interference and congested city neighbor's WIFI signals (since I have iPhone, I used Channel 13 on 54GL to avoid congestion). Also, new router must have good high gain antennas already present (I don't want to build perfect router), so I will have perfect coverage in my apartment. 54GL, when was still working, was able to give me near perfect coverage, so, I am hoping that this is not going to be a problem. So I will need Dual Band and all current protocols router.

Another important thing - new router must be able to handle (with some sort of OpenWRT or DD WRT or Tomato) multiple connections with ease - for bittorrent. At its worst, I had to reboot 54GL once per month or even more seldom.

And there is also some online gaming involved so latency is also important.

And lastly - quality of the hardware.

If I missed something, let me know.

I hope I can get some help here, as networking is my weakest point, complete noob here.

Appreciate as alway for any help provided.

 

[kanewolf]

The only way to avoid issues with congested city WIFI is to use 5Ghz. Most new routers will prohibit channel 13 based on your localization, but they are dual band so you get 5Ghz support.
Look for an AC1900 labeled router. It won't be too expensive. The Asus RT-AC68U is a good choice. They are available used for $50 - $60 on E-bay. You can get them in black plastic or white plastic.

 

[Kisianik]

Thanks for reply mate
How is reliability of AC1900. I read many horror stories about low longevity of ALL new routers, especially WIFI part. Or open source flash fixes those things?

I found https://dc502wrt.org/ and recommendations elsewhere for this guy.

Looking into present issues with hardware quality makes me wanting my old but new WRT54GL, who's parameters are enough for my needs with my crappy internet connection.

I was wondering, why WIFI is near perfect at night, but bugged down during day, what interference issues I have?

Neighbors WIFI is always on, is it neighbors WIFI traffic slows me down?

 

[bill001g]

It is likely it is your neighbors traffic causing the issue especially if happens more during prime hours when everyone is home from work.

Even though your router likely does not support it your neighbors router is likely using 40mhz channels. The channel numbers you see in your router only represent 5mhz so at the very minimum you are using 4 and your neighbor likely 8. Since even if you use 13 which is not allowed in most countries you can not fit 2 non interfering signals in.

In addition all kinds of people have bought into this mesh stuff or repeater stuff so it is very common for people to have mulitple wifi sources in their house and it would still appear as only 1 SSID to you.

If you are worried about device failure used equipment actually is in some ways better. All the early failure are gone. Still it is only a very tiny percentage. No matter what product you buy there can be failures. Even with the 54g you have there have been failures.

Nothing last forever. You either may want to wait 2-3 years or just assume you are going to throw away whatever you buy. The new wifi standard that is suppose to actually finalize the end of this year is suppose to use radio bandwidth differently. They claim there will be less interference even when you overlap. The wifi industry lies so much as it is I will wait until this technology has been on the market for a year or so before I believe the have a magic solution to interference.

Note go through the features you actually really use in dd-wrt. In fact a lot of the feature in the current version of dd-wrt can not run on your router because it does not have enough memory. TPlink and asus router have added massive numbers of feature you used only find in third party firmware. With asus you also have the option of merlin third party firmware. Asus indirectly assists in this development so it tends to be extremely stable. It does not have as many feature as say dd-wrt but how many people are really running stuff like completely captive portals on a tiny router.