[SOLVED] Upgrade a router

[JerryBels]

So, years ago I did what I never do : went to a store and trusted a seller to recommend me a nice router. He sold me a Kasda KW62293 router which has been, I guess, fine at best for some times. Now it seems very tired and I'm looking to replace it. Seems the multiplication of devices (lights, vacuum cleaners, cameras and more and more stuff) did it no good.



I started my researches - knowing I live in Israel I have a fairly smaller choice than those who are from the US, and the price is often much more expensive. SO I thought why not take a look at the chinese brands, I can probably get a great deal from Aliexpress.



I narrowed down my researches to these models :

- a Tp-Link Archer Ax10 AX1500 locally that I can get for about ~$113

- This new Xiaomi model : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001052636749.html

- This pricier Xiaomi model : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001033923816.html

- This Huawei model : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001216984454.html



I don't know a lot about it, learned a lot today while doing my researches but wonder what's marketing and what's really interesting, so I won't mind a little help

 

[bill001g]

So your largest problem is the current router you have has a VDSL2 modem in it. If you are not using the modem part then the other routers will work. If you need a VDSL2 modem it is going to limit your choice. You might be able to use your current router as a modem but dsl can be a lot more tricky than cable modem.

You seem to have decided on wifi6. First you will get no benefit unless your end devices also support wifi6.
Wifi6 is very new and still has a lot of bugs. This is where buying from a strong company that you can get patches from is important. 802.11ac has been around for so long the radio chipset are very stable so you can take more chances with lesser known brands.

Also wifi6 is going to be a outdated product "soon?". Wifi6e is going to add a huge amount of bandwidth on the 6g frequencies. Not sure when we will see it but if you can't use wifi6 today it might not be worth the money because wifi6e might be out by the time you get wifi6 end devices.

 

[JerryBels]

So your largest problem is the current router you have has a VDSL2 modem in it. If you are not using the modem part then the other routers will work. If you need a VDSL2 modem it is going to limit your choice. You might be able to use your current router as a modem but dsl can be a lot more tricky than cable modem.

You seem to have decided on wifi6. First you will get no benefit unless your end devices also support wifi6.
Wifi6 is very new and still has a lot of bugs. This is where buying from a strong company that you can get patches from is important. 802.11ac has been around for so long the radio chipset are very stable so you can take more chances with lesser known brands.

Also wifi6 is going to be a outdated product "soon?". Wifi6e is going to add a huge amount of bandwidth on the 6g frequencies. Not sure when we will see it but if you can't use wifi6 today it might not be worth the money because wifi6e might be out by the time you get wifi6 end devices.

Hi and thanks for all of this! Incredibly interesting, and lots of info I didn't have.

First things first. I didn't even think about the modem part of this. Looks like I will have to rethink what I will buy... Because I don't have an external modem and my router is indeed used as a modem as well. So, looks like you avoided me lots of trouble. Thanks!

This aside, about wifi6, I didn't really decided to take a wifi6 compatible product. I choose those because they're the higher end of what Xiaomi (from which I have lots of products I like) offers, and I found the Huawei by running some comparisons. Any other routers seems to be awfully pricier to give the same amount of benefits.

I mean, as I said I didn't know a lot before but I did some researches to understand what qualities would help me prevent the same issues I have now. So I see I need a dual band router, lots of concurrent connections, with big coverage (those routers pack high gain antennas, and the AX3600 has an antenna for connected things specifically), good speed, quad core cpus and a fair amount of ram, MU-MIMO support... Also a 3Gb lan port doesn't look bad either.

BUT... It looks like none of them has a modem component. So I'm basically back to square one...

 

[bill001g]

The modem really limits you. The other issue is your end devices are 1/2 the connection. In most cases it is the end device and not the router that limits the total speed. Just like to use wifi6 you must have wifi6 device many of the other feature will be unused and it will drop back to slower common protocols. Other feature like mu-mimo and some none standard data encodings will not help if the end device also does not use it.

Although I can't say about stuff directly from china stuff used in the EU and the USA has to be certified by things similar to the FCC. They control how much radio power and what channels they can transit on. The number of antenna and size of the antenna are all directly or indirectly by these rules. This means in the USA almost all router more or less have the same power output.

Isreal is one of those countries that has far more restrictions on the wifi bandwidth. The number of radio channels is far less. How exactly they restrict this is hard to say. My guess is they have some way to restrict imports on large retailers. This is very strange in the USA, you can legally import and own device that function on the wrong channels it is just illegal to actually use it. Not sure how they would catch you unless you say interfered with some government stuff. I guess they feel it is not a lot of people that will direct import.

Still to use stuff outside the limits gets tricky. For example in the USA you can't use channel 13 on 2.4g. You could get a router from the EU but then you would also have to say get a phone that can use channel 13 also. The problem is phone also have cell bands so it is really hard to find a phone that can use channel 13 and also function on USA cell carriers. So it is hard to actually use channel 13 in the USA.

My general recommendation for people is to buy a router with a number 1200-1750. These support the common data protocols also used by end devices. Finding one that is technically legal in isreal is going to be a much involved things I suspect.

 

[gggplaya]

My problem with chinese routers is the software inside the router may not be the best, may not be fully stable etc....

I prefer large router companies that use the same software for their whole lineup, but cut out features as you trickle down their product line. When there's a security hole, they can patch it quickly.