Wireless Router Recommendations

[x1l1]

My current router (Netgear Nighthawk R7000) has met its end and I am in need of a new router. I have been doing a lot of research but unfortunately I am finding that some of the top user reviews on various retailers and review sites seem padded. I am hoping to get real user feedback from everyone on here.

Some background on my network: I have gigabit fiber internet with 23 always-on devices. Those devices are made up of 14 smart home devices (Smartthings hub, Ring Doorbell Pro, Arlo Pro, Rachio, Nest Thermostat, Ecobee Thermostat, Philips Hue, LIFX bulbs, Lutron, Google/Amazon Voice Assistants, etc), two TVs, two smartphones, three computers, and two game consoles.

What I am looking for in a router is reliability, usability via the router interface and capability for my gigabit up/down internet speeds. Based on my research, I like the following routers: TP-Link Talon AD7200, Asus RT-AC88U, and Linksys WRT32x. What other routers would you recommend based on my needs? Any routers I like that you have concern with?

Thanks everyone!

 

[bill001g]

Maybe another r7000 if it worked well for you ?

Don't get caught up in the marketing hype. Having more antenna and more radios is mostly so they can print bigger numbers on the box. If you end devices do not support these feature and they will not be used....so you get no extra speed/benefit.

The tplink for example is has support for the 60mhz band. I was not sure that that spec was even finalized and it will be a long time before you find support common on end devices.

Your situation is also a little more of a challenge. Having gigabit internet will quickly show how much cpu power you really need at times. The main benefit of the linksys talks about traffic prioritization. If you actually use that feature you will likely cut the maximum throughput of the router. Almost all modern routers have some kind of hardware NAT acceleration that does not actually use the CPU. They are pretty secretive about how they actually accomplish this. Using many of the fancy features disables this and move this function back to the cpu which bottlenecks the throughput. Since the cpu can still run many hundreds of mbps you only see issue from people that have very high speed connections.

The main problem with any router reviews especially wireless related ones is the house they are tested in make far more difference than the small difference in routers. Wireless is affected by stuff as minor as the humidity levels of the air so you could get different results even in the same house. If you go to the FCC sites and read the reports filed by router manufacture where they must test under very strict standard you will find very little difference between routers...at least as far as broadcast power since that is all the FCC really cares about.

 

[x1l1]

Maybe another r7000 if it worked well for you ?

Don't get caught up in the marketing hype. Having more antenna and more radios is mostly so they can print bigger numbers on the box. If you end devices do not support these feature and they will not be used....so you get no extra speed/benefit.

The tplink for example is has support for the 60mhz band. I was not sure that that spec was even finalized and it will be a long time before you find support common on end devices.

Your situation is also a little more of a challenge. Having gigabit internet will quickly show how much cpu power you really need at times. The main benefit of the linksys talks about traffic prioritization. If you actually use that feature you will likely cut the maximum throughput of the router. Almost all modern routers have some kind of hardware NAT acceleration that does not actually use the CPU. They are pretty secretive about how they actually accomplish this. Using many of the fancy features disables this and move this function back to the cpu which bottlenecks the throughput. Since the cpu can still run many hundreds of mbps you only see issue from people that have very high speed connections.

The main problem with any router reviews especially wireless related ones is the house they are tested in make far more difference than the small difference in routers. Wireless is affected by stuff as minor as the humidity levels of the air so you could get different results even in the same house. If you go to the FCC sites and read the reports filed by router manufacture where they must test under very strict standard you will find very little difference between routers...at least as far as broadcast power since that is all the FCC really cares about.

Thanks for the info bill001g. Interesting to know that the FCC filings contain the testing information.

While the R7000 has done its job for the last year and a half before it died, I got this router before gigabit speeds were available. Since the 2.4ghz band is the most commonly supported band for devices I was thinking I would get a router with a higher throughput on 2.4ghz than the r7000 offered. I am essentially looking for a router that allows those 23 always-on devices to have maximum uptime, even when I need to download a 36 gigabyte game to my Playstation 4.

I feel any of those routers I listed could serve my needs, but I do believe the marketing hype is blinding; thus, I certainly don't want to overspend for wasted features. A lot of times bigger doesn't mean better but if the router is reliable, it could mean future proofing my network for 5+ years. I am going to do some more research on router CPU as it relates to gigabit speeds.

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

This is really where you need to learn the details of how they get those speed numbers. Search for 802.11ac or 802.11n MCS and then for 802.11ax You should find charts that show the combinations of values that get those numbers.

Your current device already gets so called 600m. This requires 3 40mhz feeds using 256QAM to get 200m. The 256QAM is a non certified extension to 802.11n. This means devices like apple will never support it. 256QaM also only work at extremely short distances, you pretty much have to put your laptop on top of the router to get it to run that. It is extremely sensitive to interference and will quickly drop back to a lesser encoding.

So this drops the maximum speed to 450m for almost all devices. In addition it is extremely rare to find appliance type of devices that have more than 2 antenna some only have 1. So now you are at 300m.

You will get no speed improvement at all if your end devices do not support the advanced features. It is highly likely a large number of your device are not using all the abilities of your r7000 even today.

You need to really be careful about so called "future proofing" concept with routers. You will get a piece of junk like the so called PRE-802.11n routers. Manufacture released these years before the standard was finalized and when it finally was they were not 100% compatible so end devices.

The routers you list appear to be the first run at 802.11ax. This standard is not set to be released for close to 2 years. Many end device manufactures will not take the chance to run against a standard that is not set. You can get a router but nothing to talk to it likely for 6month to a years after the release. Then you hope that they do not change the standard. Some of these can not be made compliant with just software.

Then it still does not fix the current problem that devices only have 2 antenna, and you are not going to see them add more because a new protocol is not going to reduce the physical size of the antenna.