New Router

Which Router Option Should I Go With?

  • Linksys WRT

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Netgear Nighthawk

    Votes: 1 33.3%

  • ASUS RT-AC68U

    Votes: 3 100.0%

  • Netgear R6400-100NAS

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Keep Current Router

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    3
Origin Saint

Origin Saint

Well-Known Member
Hi all,

Through some circumstances in my life, I am now living in an area attached to a garage instead of inside a house. While this is a alright scenario, my Linksys router is giving me some trouble out here. The ceilings of the rooms are made of sheet metal, and therefore are great at interfering with all kinds of wireless signals. I managed to get my router down to about 5 foot off of the ground in an accessible place, where it should easily be able to spread across the three rooms I use (probably about 20 feet one way and 50 feet the other way or so). Issue being, that it's been having some issues I've never had before since I came out here:

1) My Motorola Moto X (2nd. Gen.) connects and disconnects repeatedly from it, whilst the Netgear router that it sitting slightly above the sheet metal ceiling in a room even further away, has no issues with this, nor does any other Wi-Fi signal anywhere I frequent.

2) My Xbox One has issues connecting to it. When connecting, it repeatedly tells me that the password is incorrect, even though other devices (laptops, etc...) connect with that same password just fine. I have reset the router since this issue and haven't had a chance to try again, though.

Regardless of these issues, I plan to get a new router before too long anyway, so this at the very least, will help in the near future if anyone has any ideas on how to correct the issues I'm having. I definitely need something with some strong antennae on it, and I need to have something with USB access (preferably 3.0 for future NAS connectivity). My current network consists of a Zoom modem/router combo inside the house with an ethernet connection to the garage area where I live plugged into a TP-Link 5-port desktop switch, with a ethernet connection to my router. My router is a Linksys E3200.

So I've been looking into some routers, and narrowed it down to 4 choices, and I'll create a poll for them on this thread for voting:

Thanks in advance for the assistance, I appreciate all suggestions and help!
 
I recommend the Asus AC68U. It has external antennas, a very powerful OS, lots of expandability with USB 3.0 ports, and supports DD-WRT and Tomato firmware.
 
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They all sound pretty synonymous for your needs. Sheet metal sucks, it's especially worse when the entire structure is a metal cube that acts as a Faraday cage.

The AC68U is decent, you could also go 'more advanced' with a couple Ubiquiti APs if you had multiple places to mount access points throughout the house, but that is usually impractical if renting.

Jamebonds1 said:
I need it because I need to protect my highly sensitive data from like malware
Click to expand...
The AC68U is not an IPS or even security device.

You do not understand stateful firewalls.
 
Jamebonds1 said:
They have security feature such as strong wep and have trend micro to block suspect.
Click to expand...
WEP is not a strong security protocol. WPA2 is far superior.

Also it doesn't have Trend Micro installed on the router. That's an antivirus software for Windows.

Jamebonds1 said:
No, it is you that don't understand.
Click to expand...
Okay. Tell the network engineers (Geoff, beers, and myself, who do this for a living) they don't understand wireless networking security.
 
WEP is not secure, please, please tell me you aren't using WEP encryption for your Wi-Fi network. You should be using WPA2 with a strong passphrase.
 
So it seems at this point, it's generally unanimous for the ASUS?


beers said:
They all sound pretty synonymous for your needs. Sheet metal sucks, it's especially worse when the entire structure is a metal cube that acts as a Faraday cage.

The AC68U is decent, you could also go 'more advanced' with a couple Ubiquiti APs if you had multiple places to mount access points throughout the house, but that is usually impractical if renting.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the sheet metal is definitely annoying. Thankfully we were lent a cellular signal booster that was out there already, otherwise our cell-phones would be useless for anything off-WiFi. They are all around the same price-point, so I hadn't imagined any huge differences apart from proprietary software really.

We are effectively renting the space, paying $100/month, but it's actually my S/O's ex-step-father's (long story) property, but it's perfectly fine to do whatever we want to the space while we're in it. The only reason I would decline a set-up of this type is my complete lack of experience and knowledge in the networking field (I really need to take a class or something :rolleyes:), and I wouldn't be comfortable with it. I suppose I'm lucky enough to understand the basics to get the set-up I currently have!

Thanks for the help guys. If anyone has any more suggestions, or comments, feel free to post them up.

PS: I added the ability to select multiple options on the poll in light of Beers' point.
 
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