Router Suggestions

[Hydraengineer]

Looking for suggestions on a new router. Current router is a Netgear Nighthawk (from 2016, maybe older?) with the ISP's (Comcast) modem.

 

Read something about "Meshing"? Sounds neat, is it worth it and what are some routers that support it?

[TylerD321]

Mesh is pretty neat but really only worth it if you have a large space and/or own the house you want to add it to. I say this because mesh works best if you can hardline the connection between each of the mesh connections.

 

Before we recommend a router there’s a bit of information we need to know:

 

• How many people/devices will use this?
• What internet speeds do you pay for?
• What do you do on wifi? Games? Streaming services? Etc
• Approx square footage of the area.
• Do you need outdoor coverage?
• How many stories do you have?
• What type of materials are your walls made of?
• Do you do mostly Ethernet connection or WiFi? Or more of an even mix?

Edit: this should be obvious but we also need to know your budget.

[Hydraengineer]

20 hours ago, TylerD321 said:

Mesh is pretty neat but really only worth it if you have a large space and/or own the house you want to add it to. I say this because mesh works best if you can hardline the connection between each of the mesh connections.

 

Before we recommend a router there’s a bit of information we need to know:

 

• How many people/devices will use this?
• What internet speeds do you pay for?
• What do you do on wifi? Games? Streaming services? Etc
• Approx square footage of the area.
• Do you need outdoor coverage?
• How many stories do you have?
• What type of materials are your walls made of?
• Do you do mostly Ethernet connection or WiFi? Or more of an even mix?

Edit: this should be obvious but we also need to know your budget.

• 11 Devices
• 800 Mbps Down / 20 Mbps Up
• Gaming, Streaming, etc.
• Unknown
• Just enough that we can connect while on our porch.
• 2 stories
• Internal walls are wood. Exterior is brick.
• Mostly wifi, only my PC is connected via cable. Might connect my PS5 via cable too. So at least 2 ethernet.
• $500 is the most I'm willing to spend. 

[TylerD321]

7 minutes ago, Hydraengineer said:

• 11 Devices
• 800 Mbps Down / 20 Mbps Up
• Gaming, Streaming, etc.
• Unknown
• Just enough that we can connect while on our porch.
• 2 stories
• Internal walls are wood. Exterior is brick.
• Mostly wifi, only my PC is connected via cable. Might connect my PS5 via cable too. So at least 2 ethernet.
• $500 is the most I'm willing to spend. 

@Donut417 @Bombastinator You guys have any recommendations to throw here?

[LIGISTX]

21 hours ago, Hydraengineer said:

Looking for suggestions on a new router. Current router is a Netgear Nighthawk (from 2016, maybe older?) with the ISP's (Comcast) modem.

 

Read something about "Meshing"? Sounds neat, is it worth it and what are some routers that support it?

Do you actually need a new router...? What is it not doing for you that you would like it to do?

 

Your current router should be perfect for your needs.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, TylerD321 said:

@Donut417 @Bombastinator You guys have any recommendations to throw here?

The only thing I can add is if you don’t want the thing to go outside your house limit the power and turn off ID broadcast.  It’s not foolproof but it does make it more annoying.  I wouldn’t call them actual security measures but they can dissuade casual wardrivers.  It’s sort of the low hanging fruit theory.  I don’t know the capacity of your router. (No, I didn’t look it up lazy bastard that I am, so I’ll give you what general stuff I got.  I find typing a lot easier than looking stuff up.  I also dunno shit about specific models) 

 

general wifi stuff:

There’s a,b,g,n,ac, and ax. There are two bands that they use.  2.4ghz and 5.0ghz.  Various systems will use one, the other, be switchable or both at the same time.  2.4ghz has smaller bandwidth but better penetration.  5.0 is the opposite. A is the oldest.  For a while it was occasionally useful when everyone had b or g (both are 5 MHz) because even though it was slower no one was using the band so there was less interference.  It would occasionally actually be better) n includes b and g, ac includes n, ax includes ac.  Your router is probably N or ac. As the letters increase they include more and more features.  Not all n routers include a, (which is more or less b over 2.4)  but ac will.  I think.  A was fairly rare though as b and g were cheaper to build, so there’s a good chance you don’t have any a devices.  Wifi is radio so it’s a sphere.  So on the ceiling of the first floor of a two story home in the center of the building will provide the best theoretical range.  This may not hold up in practice though because of interposing materials and interference from neighbor’s wifi.  There are phone apps you can use to measure signal strength (which will likely entail running around your house while looking at your phone.  Yes, everyone looks like an idiot doing this.  Pics or it didn’t happen)  The power of the radio broadcast is sharply limited by the FCC.  You can boost it, but you break US law when you do. (Broadcast above a certain power requires a license)  It is often reducible below that amount though.  This can be useful.  If your wifi cannot penetrate the outer walls of your house it can’t be used outside your house.  I for instance have double layer stucco so I more or less live inside a rather shitty faraday cage, a layer of hardware cloth for each layer of stucco)  with windows and doors being the only openings.  It’s bad enough cell reception is a problem.   The only actual security is encryption and it’s not awesome. (I want to say wpa3 is the best but there is also wep.  You want the newer one.  (Some of the old ones range from ridiculously bad to hackable with a rainbow table)  there are I think two open source systems for wifi routers and they tend to have a lot more features than the standard stuff so compatibility with one of those can be nice.  There are lists of which routers are compatible with what) 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Bombastinator

[Bdavis]

Mesh is simply using wifi between access points to extend your coverage. It can be a good solution if you don't have the option of running Ethernet between your access points, but wired is always the best option.

 

Ubiquiti supports meshing on all their access points.

 

Some Asus routers support meshing.

 

There are several mesh all in one solutions (router plus one or two nodes) out there such as the Ubiquiti amplifi, eero, nest.

 

What's you reason for upgrading?

More speed?

Poor coverage?

 

 

[Hydraengineer]

16 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Do you actually need a new router...? What is it not doing for you that you would like it to do?

 

Your current router should be perfect for your needs.

For now the router hasn't shown any issues. Figured with how old it is, I worry about it dying out at any point. We run a small business at home which requires internet. Cell coverage also sucks here so we use wi-fi for net as well as calling. Also, we recently got a replacement modem that's a new model. Which had me thinking if our old router might bottleneck connection performance.

 

It's less about need, more about preventing possible issues with the business.

[Falcon1986]

@Hydraengineer

 

With all that has been said already, you never mentioned the model of Netgear Nighthawk you had.

 

I've had good experience using the R7000. I'm sure its siblings from the same generation were good as well. Although I never had the internet connection to take advantage of it, I've heard that it could get very close to gigabit speeds from WAN-to-LAN over the ethernet ports, which is saying a lot from a device that old. Can't say the same for the newer Nighthawk generation. I only upgraded because I needed better WiFi coverage and more features.

 

Any device can fail at any time. But if you keep it cool and dust-free, it should last for quite a while. No need to replace it now. If you want more features, I'd suggest you look into third-party firmware (DD-WRT and FreshTomato) to extend your use of it.

[Bombastinator]

29 minutes ago, Hydraengineer said:

For now the router hasn't shown any issues. Figured with how old it is, I worry about it dying out at any point. We run a small business at home which requires internet. Cell coverage also sucks here so we use wi-fi for net as well as calling. Also, we recently got a replacement modem that's a new model. Which had me thinking if our old router might bottleneck connection performance.

 

It's less about need, more about preventing possible issues with the business.

If it’s a N router yes.  If it’s ac though it’s still current enough.  One of the big ones is does it support secure login encryption.  Wep wpa (1) I know are not secure.  I don’t remember if it’s wpa2 or wpa3 that is sufficiently secure.  This to a degree applies to every wifi system in your house.  A lot of cheap or old stuff is b or g.  If they are also powerful enough to drive a signal outside your house you may have a security problem.

Now if you are having problems or you want to add features you may want to update regardless.  If you don’t though and your router fits your needs and is sufficiently secure I personally do not see a need.

A decent modern wifi router is not especially cheap.  I paid only $100 and I wish I got something with more features.  

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Hydraengineer said:

For now the router hasn't shown any issues. Figured with how old it is, I worry about it dying out at any point. We run a small business at home which requires internet. Cell coverage also sucks here so we use wi-fi for net as well as calling. Also, we recently got a replacement modem that's a new model. Which had me thinking if our old router might bottleneck connection performance.

 

It's less about need, more about preventing possible issues with the business.

Im going to take it you're on Comcast business class internet? Because Comcast doesn't supply standard modems on the residential connections. 

 

On the residential side Comcast does 1.4 Gbps down 45 Mbps up. In some areas they are going to be doing 2 Gbps and maybe 100 to 200 Mbps up. That might be why they sent a new modem. Im not sure what speeds are offered on the business side, I just know the service is hell of expensive. 

 

The big question is what internet speeds do you want the router to support? Because when you get to Gigabit and Multi gig options that starts to put a lot of pressure on the SOC's on many routers and they tend to not be able to do NAT at those speeds. For a long time you pretty much needed to build a PFsense box just to get full usage out of Gigabit internet. 

 

The only suggestion router wise Id give is go WiFi 6. I think the standard has been out long enough that its mostly going to be OK to invest in. 

[Hydraengineer]

On 6/10/2023 at 3:49 PM, Falcon1986 said:

@Hydraengineer

 

With all that has been said already, you never mentioned the model of Netgear Nighthawk you had.

 

I've had good experience using the R7000. I'm sure its siblings from the same generation were good as well. Although I never had the internet connection to take advantage of it, I've heard that it could get very close to gigabit speeds from WAN-to-LAN over the ethernet ports, which is saying a lot from a device that old. Can't say the same for the newer Nighthawk generation. I only upgraded because I needed better WiFi coverage and more features.

 

Any device can fail at any time. But if you keep it cool and dust-free, it should last for quite a while. No need to replace it now. If you want more features, I'd suggest you look into third-party firmware (DD-WRT and FreshTomato) to extend your use of it.

Mine is the R7000.

 

On 6/10/2023 at 3:52 PM, Bombastinator said:

If it’s a N router yes.  If it’s ac though it’s still current enough.  One of the big ones is does it support secure login encryption.  Wep wpa (1) I know are not secure.  I don’t remember if it’s wpa2 or wpa3 that is sufficiently secure.  This to a degree applies to every wifi system in your house.  A lot of cheap or old stuff is b or g.  If they are also powerful enough to drive a signal outside your house you may have a security problem.

Now if you are having problems or you want to add features you may want to update regardless.  If you don’t though and your router fits your needs and is sufficiently secure I personally do not see a need.

A decent modern wifi router is not especially cheap.  I paid only $100 and I wish I got something with more features.  

It's a "802.11ac Dual Band Gigabit" router and the box says (WPA / WPA2 - PSK). Sounds like I'm secure then?

 

On 6/10/2023 at 6:25 PM, Donut417 said:

Im going to take it you're on Comcast business class internet? Because Comcast doesn't supply standard modems on the residential connections. 

 

On the residential side Comcast does 1.4 Gbps down 45 Mbps up. In some areas they are going to be doing 2 Gbps and maybe 100 to 200 Mbps up. That might be why they sent a new modem. Im not sure what speeds are offered on the business side, I just know the service is hell of expensive. 

 

The big question is what internet speeds do you want the router to support? Because when you get to Gigabit and Multi gig options that starts to put a lot of pressure on the SOC's on many routers and they tend to not be able to do NAT at those speeds. For a long time you pretty much needed to build a PFsense box just to get full usage out of Gigabit internet. 

 

The only suggestion router wise Id give is go WiFi 6. I think the standard has been out long enough that its mostly going to be OK to invest in. 

Yes they do....We've had Comcast since they bought out our local provider. They always supplied a modem for us, even before starting our business. So unless I misunderstood you, what you wrote was incorrect.

 

Our plan is 800 Mbps Down / 20 Mbps Up. That's sounds worse than what you described for residential. So it can't be business class. There is no other plans to select from when going into our plan details.

 

Don't need faster connection at the moment. More than enough for the business and we have no issues streaming/gaming. So a router that can handle what our current bandwidth.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Hydraengineer said:

es they do....We've had Comcast since they bought out our local provider. They always supplied a modem for us, even before starting our business. So unless I misunderstood you, what you wrote was incorrect.

On the residential side they provide a gateway ONLY. I know for a fact, we have had Comcast since the early 2000s when they bought out our local provider. Comcast stopped supplying standard cable modems back in the earlyish days in the Docsis 3.0 days. A gateway is a modem and router in one box. When most people say modem from the ISP they most likely are talking about a gateway. Most ISP's in the US supply gateway devices. Charter is the only ones I know that supply a standard modem. Verizon is the only Fiber provider I know that supplies a standard ONT. 

 

Here are the currently line up of equipment they will supply (https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/broadband-gateways-userguides). Take note that none are standard plain Jane cable modems. Again this is on the residential side, business class uses different equipment I believe. 

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Hydraengineer said:

Mine is the R7000.

 

It's a "802.11ac Dual Band Gigabit" router and the box says (WPA / WPA2 - PSK). Sounds like I'm secure then?

 

Yes they do....We've had Comcast since they bought out our local provider. They always supplied a modem for us, even before starting our business. So unless I misunderstood you, what you wrote was incorrect.

 

Our plan is 800 Mbps Down / 20 Mbps Up. That's sounds worse than what you described for residential. So it can't be business class. There is no other plans to select from when going into our plan details.

 

Don't need faster connection at the moment. More than enough for the business and we have no issues streaming/gaming. So a router that can handle what our current bandwidth.

Depending on which codec you use I think so.  I don’t know what that slash means. Ac is I think also known as wifi5 with ax being wifi6.  I guess that would make n 4, g 3, b 2, and A 1, but I’ve never seen those used.  Basically wifi got a dumbass no-actual-improvenent “upgrade” that was really just a renaming too,  it just wasn’t as total a cluster as the USB stuff.  Either way ax-wifi5 was a downgrade not an upgrade, that happened a lot.  I don’t know if all marketing execs will rot in hell by definition, but I think a lot of them.

[Hydraengineer]

On 6/11/2023 at 8:36 PM, Donut417 said:

On the residential side they provide a gateway ONLY. I know for a fact, we have had Comcast since the early 2000s when they bought out our local provider. Comcast stopped supplying standard cable modems back in the earlyish days in the Docsis 3.0 days. A gateway is a modem and router in one box. When most people say modem from the ISP they most likely are talking about a gateway. Most ISP's in the US supply gateway devices. Charter is the only ones I know that supply a standard modem. Verizon is the only Fiber provider I know that supplies a standard ONT. 

 

Here are the currently line up of equipment they will supply (https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/broadband-gateways-userguides). Take note that none are standard plain Jane cable modems. Again this is on the residential side, business class uses different equipment I believe. 

Ah ok, I misunderstood you then. Yeah they sent us the "XFI ADVANCED GATEWAY (XB6)".

[E-waste]

By the time you most likely actually have a hardware failure, wifi-7 devices will be widely available.

 

I recommend buy a used version of the same or similar wifi router you currently use, to have as a backup device, and, when it does eventual fail, whenever that may be, could be ten years from now, or more, you'll have a backup device and could purchase a much newer model.