Fritz Routers

[RpT]

Have read quite a few topics looking for advice on router purchases so i thought i would throw this out there. About 6 months ago, our router died after a party and so we were in need of a replacement. I live in a shared house and we get a lot of visitors so a reliable wifi signal for multiple devices was required aswell as 3 ports for ethernet. After a lot of comparison online (looked at the brands you would expect : Asus, TP-link, Netgear, etc) i finally came across this little gem :

 

http://www.fritzbox.eu/en/products/FRITZBox_3390/

 

This manufacturer is not widely known outside of Germany, but from what i can gather its very common to find them there.

 

I have to say i LOVE this router! Its actually the best i have ever delt with in terms of connectivity, options, ease of use and reliability (i have set up quite a few for friends and family)! For the price it does everything we need and then some (have seen it handling 3 ethernet connections and 6 mobile devices concurrently with no issues). It even has 2 USB ports which makes printer sharing a doddle. Also it can self regulate power usage and you can set up various plans including disabling the wifi for certain hours of the day so im pretty sure we are using about 1/2 the power of our previous router (some netgear one - i dont still have it to check the model unfortunately).

 

 

There is an onboard NAS that is only 22mb but then, the USB ports could of course be used to simply add additional storage with ease, if you want a cheap and flexible way to share data throughout the house.

 

The UI is actually the best layout i have seen on any router - there's all the details and feedback you could possibly want about your network but at the same time its very easy to navigate and change settings. I find myself logging on every so oftern out of curiosity just to check out the stats. Theres also the built in option to connect remotely for when you are away if you make a FRITZ account, although i leave this disabled as i don't have a use for it and its a minor security hole. Tried it once though and it works as intended (much like everything else on this device). The device autoconfigure's channel settings or this can be set manually to avoid conflicting with other networks in the area :

 

 

The only single downside i have with it is that being a DSL modem, we had to dedicate one of the ethernet ports as the input from the ISP's hub (virgin) but as that was not going to be used anyway it was somthing i had planned for.

 

cost : £150 so certainly great value for money. Not sure what the availiblity is like outside of europe and the UK, but worth a look!

 

The next time someone asks me what router to buy i will be advising them to go for some flavour of FRITZ!box, so hopefully someone here finds this recommendation usefull aswell

 

another review of the router can be found here (one of the ones i based my purchase decision on) : http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/wireless-routers/1301563/avm-fritz-box-3390

 

-RpT

[qwertywarrior]

ouch 150 !

 

rather get a second hand router and flash Shibby Tomato

[RpT]

ouch 150 !

 

rather get a second hand router and flash Shibby Tomato

 

True there are cheaper alternatives, but we need a workhorse and one that is reliable with strong wifi! Never heard of Shibby Tomato - googling now.

 

Edit, also that was split 4ways so it worked out at less than £40 each

[qwertywarrior]

True there are cheaper alternatives, but we need a workhorse and one that is reliable with strong wifi! Never heard of Shibby Tomato - googling now.

shibby tomato is quite an amazing stable Firmware

 

for good range you could get an Asus n66u  and flash it with tomato if u want to fine tune QoS and look at bandwidth usage from each device etc

 

i currently own a Netgear WNR3500L the wifi isnt really that good but i dont care since i have 2 access points i got it for tomato compatibility , powerful BCM 4716 soc and that it was really cheap second hand for about $25

[RpT]

The other point is that for a device that will be running 24/7 the power saving aspects really make a differance in the long term. Also, build quality and lifespan of a product made in germany could arguably be a lot better than one manufactured in asia! My first instinct was to go with an ASUS device but a few reviews on amazon of them breaking after a while was one of the points that lead me to do more research. I have no first-hand experience of this however, so take that opinion with a pinch of salt.

 

Shibby Tomato project looks interesting, might have to play with it sometime on an old router if i see a used one cheap... although probably not on the shared network in my house (unless my housemates are away)! Downtime is a pretty terrible thing these days and gets super annoying quickly if you need to do work/business...