Need router suggestions for under £100
 

I have VM30 XL (soon to be 60Meg) and I don't think my old WNR2000 attached to my VMNG300 is up to the job of throwing that around wirelessly. It has enough trouble with throwing files around the LAN, and it's on a clean channel in my area, anyway... I need a router for under £80 that will cope with dual band simultaneously, and has gigabit ports, and if possible supports DD-WRT or OpenWRT.

FYI in 2.4GHz Channels 1 and 6 are taken, 11 is mostly clean. In 5GHz all channels are clean.

I tend to throw large graphics files over the network, so faster WLAN and LAN is better.

I've been looking at the WNR3700, the D-Link DIR-825, but wondered if there was another suggestion I might look at? The Linksys E4200 is outside my price range, even 2nd hand.

Re: Need router suggestions for under £100
 

As the E4200 is outside your price range (cheapest I can see is £110 delivered from Saverstore), how about the E3200? I nearly bought that before I opted for the E4200.

My experience of the WNDR3700 was poor (lack of stability). Suggest you stear clear of that router.

Re: Need router suggestions for under £100
 

The WNDR3700 is one of the best and most stable routers out there, with proper firmware on it and is exceedingly fast. The DIR-825 comes with broken/missing 5Ghz LNAs so the 5Ghz performance is terrible.

However if your old router has problems throwing files around the LAN, it's either got a faulty switch o is not the problem. Throwing files around the LAN shouldn't be going through the router at all.

Finally, whether a channel is "clean" or "taken" should not be taken as an accurate predictor of expected performance. "Clean" channels can perform worse than "taken" ones and often do. Channel occupancy time and noise floor are what determines performance and neither can be determined from whether a channel is "taken" or not.