Best router for me?

[NyteOwl]

I have had decent luck with Netgear stuff, so long as you don't buy the very bottom end models - but that's true for any brand pretty much.

[Perineum]

Netgear or Asus for me.

[Thund3rball]

Originally Posted by Perineum

I have the N16, and it works great. It's got months and month of uptime and never has an issue. It's got gobs of RAM and upgradable antennas.

The only advantage of the other models is faster WAN to LAN speed, which unless you're on Shaw 250mbit won't affect you on the N16 (it's good for around 150mbit) and the main one is better wifi. If you don't really need the wifi then I'd go with the N16. simply because it's the best router I ever owned.

Your WRT54G is probably limiting you to around the 30 to 40mbit speed, if I recall.

What do you mean better wifi? Because better wifi sounds like a good idea to me? I am not on Shaw 250mbit... just the regular hi-speed plan.

I am liking the sound of the super beefy wifi of this one mentioned in the thread. Do you know if it is a significant boost in performance over the N16 or negligible?

ASUS RT-N66U Dual Band Wireless N900 Ultra Thin Gigabit Router 2.4/5GHZ

[KaptCrunch]

waste of money for 1ghz transfer speed the MB will see

but rest of your hardware is 100mb transfer

[Soullessone21]

for a budget go with ASUS RT-N53 Dual Band Wireless N Router 802.11B/G/N 4PORT 10/100 5 SSID
IF you want a good router that I have not reset since the day I got it other then firmware updates and I have had the following router since before consumer over a year and a half ago.
ASUS RT-N65U Dual Processor Wireless N750 Dual Band 4 Port Gigabit Router With Dual USB3.0 Ports
Above is a friggen awesome router and even my wife with he constant desire to break all my IT toys has not ever harmed this bad boy so BUY IT!!!

[Perineum]

Originally Posted by Thund3rball

What do you mean better wifi? Because better wifi sounds like a good idea to me? I am not on Shaw 250mbit... just the regular hi-speed plan.

I am liking the sound of the super beefy wifi of this one mentioned in the thread. Do you know if it is a significant boost in performance over the N16 or negligible?

ASUS RT-N66U Dual Band Wireless N900 Ultra Thin Gigabit Router 2.4/5GHZ

I believe the N16 just has 150mbit wireless N, the other models will have higher speeds than that, providing you have the appropriate wireless cards in your computers.

The super beefy ones only really come into play once your throughput speeds go up.

For 150mbit internet connection the N16 is rampant overkill.... just depends on if you want faster wireless or not.

You'll want to read some reviews on some of the other newer routers because I think there were some that had some issues, which is the reason I went with the N16.

[Thund3rball]

So I ended up buying this Asus N56 (link below) from NCIX. I got it price matched at $97 down from $130 so I am happy with the price. Still waiting for delivery so we'll see how it goes when it arrives.

I heard you can configure two SSIDs and that it might be a good idea. So one on 2.4GHz and another on 5GHz. The reason being you can occupy 2.4GHz with regular traffic and reserve the 5GHz for downloads etc... Anybody do this? What's your thoughts?

ASUS RT-N56U Black Diamond Dual Band 4 Port Wireless N Gigabit Router 300Mbps LAN Retail

[frontier204]

Yep I used one SSID for the 5GHz and one for the 2.4GHz (conveniently labelled ____2 and ____5). It's mainly so I know which one I'm connecting to. For now I've taken down the 5GHz network since all the devices that used to use it are on powerline Ethernet and the rest are mobile devices.

If you have more than three neighbours with a WiFi enabled device in your neighbourhood / block, just assume the 2.4GHz is jammed (given that there's only 3 non-overlapping channels that you're allowed to use in Canada) and do as much with the 5GHz as you can. Scan with inSSIDer which 5GHz channel is free, set your 5GHz to that one, and put all the devices you can on that one. I just let my home server do the major downloads (e.g. I run a Bittorrent with web client on it), and that's wired to the router with Ethernet.

inSSIDer ? Discover The Wi-Fi Around You | MetaGeek

[Thund3rball]

Ok I got my new router set up. Is it normal that out of all my devices only the Smart TV can see the 5GHz SSID? My iPhones don't see it, my PS3 doesn't see it and my Nexus 7 tablet does not see it either. I haven't tried the laptops yet.

FYI I downloaded that inSSIDer app but haven't played with it yet.

[Bond007]

They won't see it unless they have a dual band receiver(that's my understanding anyway).