Quite annoyingly I can't find one of my Linksys speeches so the following will have to do:
Quote:
Originally Posted by General Maximus
I would normally say £50-£60 for a semi-decent router which is going to perform well and not die on you. In any product range you obviously start off with the lower end of the range being the cheapest and you work your way up. Luckily for you atm there is an absolute corker of a router at a cracking price. Take a look at this.
I love it when you can get great stuff which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Everyone loves to take the **** out of me for being a Linksys fan boy but that is because I started out 15 years ago with a Linksys/Cisco router which was great at the time and I never looked back. As technology has moved on over the last 15 years I updated my routers to keep up with the wireless and wan to lan throughput as I have always been on VM's highest tier. I have always had Linksys routers and each one has worked flawlessly and I have never had any dodgy lockups and needed to reboot. I have got a semi-demanding network in the house and I stream an awful lot of stuff between two nas servers and the tvs and we stream a lot of youtube content to the tv downstairs. I have got a networked laser printer in one room, Sky boxes in other rooms where we watch a lot of on demand stuff and that is without all the wireless from the tablets and phones. When you do a lot of stuff which all depends on one device (your main router) then you want something which has great wireless, great performance, great reliability and you know it isn't going to let you down.
Each one of my Linksys routers has ticked those boxes over the years and until they do something to screw it up I'll continue buying Linksys routers out of brand loyalty. I see too many people come on this forum complaining about wireless speed, wireless range, wan to lan throughput, routers locking up and loads of other stuff (way too many dns issues), all of which can and could be avoided if they just brought a decent router.
The EA6700 does about 900mbits want to lan and then you have got ac wireless as well. I think it will be a perfectly solid router for you with ample future proofing.
Most people who aren't into networking think £30 for a router is more than enough but it is literally a case of you get what you pay for. We can all think of better things to spend £65 on (or maybe not :p) but trust me when I say this is a worthy investment which will last you for years to come. Everybody should have a router which they can setup and have the peace of mind that it is going to do everything it should do without breaking a sweat.
I should point out that there are obviously other brands out there and there are some cracking Asus routers as well but for the price I think you'll struggle to find anything which can beat this. There were quite a few guys like yourself who had problems just before xmas and asked for router advice. Luckily they listened for the first time ever) and went with my advice and came back afterwards really pleased and said all their problems were solved.
If you do get a router (even if it isn't this one) come back and we'll talk about DNS. |
The
EA6700 must have been on an offer at the time I made that post a few months ago because it is £95 now.
As with everything it is always a balance between features vs cost and although there are some routers which are £15 cheaper, making the jump to AC amongst other things is worth the extra for the sake of future proofing. You haven't talked about price range so as a rough guide I would have a look at these 4 and assess your needs:
Linksys
EA4500 for £43 - dual band N900,
254mbits wan to lan throughput
Linksys
EA6200 for £65 - dual band AC900, 932mbits wan to lan throughput
Linksys
EA6700 for £95 - dual band AC1750, 892mbits want to lan throughput
Linksys
EA8500 for £130 (
fantastic price down from £230 and cheaper than the EA7500) - MU-MIMO AC2600, 702mbits wan to lan throughput
My final words of wisdom are this. Linksys are absolutely superb but Asus are also very very good. Whatever router you decided to get, I cannot emphasise enough that you should only get a Linksys or Asus. There are cheaper brands out there like Belkin and TP Link but in my book cheap = stress because they throw tantrums and don't do what they are supposed to. If you want a quality router with high performance and loads of features go for Linksys or Asus.