Routers.

[Doggo]

I was a somewhat qualified network engineer in a former life. Don't waste your money on 'gaming' grade or any consumer grade shit shit unless you like pissing money at the wall on gimmicky bullshit. Go enterprise, and you'll never look back. Have a look at Ubiquiti offerings. I absolutely love Ubiquiti, after trying basically every other brand money can buy, Ubiquiti us what I will always come back to. Have a look at the unifi and I think amplifi series of products. Absolutely bulletproof, and the access points can't be beaten, it's as good as it gets and won't break the bank.

 

[murdered meat bag]

Blame the tech illiterate customers. They'd rather think it's a good deal than put in extra brain power for research.

a friend of mine said his att fiber modem doesn't have an ethernet port to add a router, so he's stuck using the shit internal wifi.

i don't know if this is true but he's not tech retarded.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

I was a somewhat qualified network engineer in a former life. Don't waste your money on 'gaming' grade or any consumer grade shit shit unless you like pissing money at the wall on gimmicky bullshit. Go enterprise, and you'll never look back. Have a look at Ubiquiti offerings. I absolutely love Ubiquiti, after trying basically every other brand money can buy, Ubiquiti us what I will always come back to. Have a look at the unifi and I think amplifi series of products. Absolutely bulletproof, and the access points can't be beaten, it's as good as it gets and won't break the bank.

Every consumer grade router I've used since the Linksys WRT54G has been utter garbage. I'd have to restart them constantly due to things just breaking for no reason (DNS in particular would constantly break). I switched to an Ubiquity EdgeMAX with a Unifi AP and have never looked back. The only problem I've had is that I can't get IPv6 working on the WAN side, but I'm going to blame my ISP for that one.

 

[Pee Cola]

I've had a lot of success with DrayTek routers over the years. idk whether or not any of their routers support custom firmware, but a lot of their models (especially high end ones) have so many features that you may not even need custom firmware. I'd rate them as "prosumer" items; way better than the shitbox routers from places like Walmart or Best Buy, probably on par with Ubiquiti IMHO.

One nice touch is that many of their models support multiple WAN interfaces, either for a bonded connection (say 2 x cable or 2 x fiber connections) or for fallback. I use a Vigor 2862n with VDSL2 (because Ausfagistan NBN) with 4G fallback and it works great.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I've had a lot of success with DrayTek routers over the years.

I've heard good things about them on occasion, but where on earth can you buy them? It seems like they have it all locked up behind "systems integrators" or whatever parasitic middlemen call themselves these days.

 

[Pee Cola]

I've heard good things about them on occasion, but where on earth can you buy them? It seems like they have it all locked up behind "systems integrators" or whatever parasitic middlemen call themselves these days.

I'm not sure where to buy them in the States. I know that over here in Australia, DrayTek gear is easy enough to buy through specialist IT retailers (mainly Mom and Pop computer stores).

If DrayTek gear is too hard to find where you live, just go with Ubiquiti. They seem to make good stuff too, although my experience with Ubiquiti is mainly with their wireless access points rather than their routers.

 

[Overly Serious]

Try and get a router that supports WPA3 and WiFi 6. Whenever buying new tech it's good to land on the right side of any new technological ravine that's opening up if possible.

 

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Every consumer grade router I've used since the Linksys WRT54G has been utter garbage.

As far as I know, there's only one company around making a genuinely 'premium' consumer router. AVM of Germany makes the FRITZ!Box line with an integrated PBX and some well thought out media server and smart home features that might even be secure.

They still update firmware for decade-old devices with new features (not just the home integration stuff, they even added WPA3 support for old devices in a recent release) and provide release notes. And even their newest models support ISDN, multiple wired phones, and acting as a base station for random cordless phones (as well as calls through the unit from a mobile).

There are even a number of projects around like Freetz for rebuilding the firmware with additional software packages, such as an OpenVPN server.

I hope they stick around, but a lot of their margin probably comes from selling their integrated camera/security/home/phone devices in their home market, and I suspect the Amazon Echo Your Conversations Directly To Langley and the Apple thing are cutting into sales of their 'smart home' stuff.