Which wi-fi N 300mb/s router?

[garnet]

I am after a new router for home.
Which wi-fi N 300 mb/s router would you recomend? Something that you have good experience with in terms of speed and stability.
Will be used with atheros wi-fi n card on my t60.
Suggestions welcome.

[goofyGAguy]

I've had pretty good luck with a refurbed Linksys E1500. Got it at NewEgg for $22 shipped.

[RealBlackStuff]

I'm very happy with my Asus RT-N66U, running with stock firmware.
It's Dual Band, N900 and has Gigabit ports.

[Ormu]

I've also had an Asus RT-N66U for a few weeks now and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It has worked well without frequent rebooting and it has lots of features and configuration options. The drawbacks include high operating temperature (which may shorten its life time) and bad-quality UI localization (Finnish). I think even the English interface has some spelling mistakes.

The router should also support many third-party firmwares if you need the maximum configurability and performance.

[loyukfai]

Budget? Area/floors to cover? Any specific needs?

Unless you're streaming high bit-rate media wirelessly at home all day long, it probably doesn't matter if you have a 150 or 300 model since your Internet connection maybe lower that what the most basic model has to offer in terms of effective bandwidth.

Cheers.

[Cigarguy]

I've been running the ASUS mentioned above and by far it's been the best router I've owned. However, I couldn't get it ever working properly with ASUS firmware. I've installed ddwrt firmware and it's be solid and fast for the past 1.5 years.

[garnet]

Thanks guys.
The budget is up to $160. Only one floor to cover in a small flat.
My current g router gives me 1.8 MB/s on the wi-fi. My internet is a 10 Mbit/s cable connection, which is 1.2 MB/s. I will get a 30 Mbit/s cable upgrade for free, so in theory I will need ~ 3.5 MB/s over wi-fi. Virgin are pretty good here (UK)) and they deliver.
Also, yes, hi-def streaming is on the list to stream from a local NAS.
I see the ASUS seems like a reasonable one. I will check it up. Is there anything to model type or any RT-N66U will do even if I decide to put TP firmware?
Keep the suggestions coming

[loyukfai]

The ASUS is good but it's too expensive for my taste. TP-Link has one or two dual-band models, 600 (300@2.4GHz + 300@5GHz) or 750 (300@2.4GHz + 450@5GHz), which should be under or around 100USD.

Note that, to achieve a 450 connection, 3 antennas are required, and most laptops, AFAIK, only have 2.

As 802.11ac is just around the corner I don't think it's too good an idea to get a high priced 802.11n model at the moment.

Besides, since *Wrt (either DD or Open) support is high on my list, I usually go there and see what people are using to educate myself.

Cheers.

[thorcik]

I, too, own the mentioned Asus router. Before I owned a Linksys wrt160nl and, in my flat, I see a *huge* improvement in terms of signal strength. There used to be places where I couldn't connect at all or the signal was very weak. Well, no more.
I currently hace a 20Mbit cable connection, will upgrade to 60 in a few weeks so I don't want my router to bottleneck it.
As for the ac standard - I don't see myself going for it anytime soon, I've only just bought 2 Intel 6300 cards for my ThinkPads so I'm happy for now.

As for the open firmware I know it supports Tomato for sure as a friend of mine is using it.

[garnet]

Right, it seems asus is the preffered one. Any suggestions on which firmware is best - the stock one or any third party?
If TP which and why?
Cheers

[loyukfai]

Between a 40USD model (WRT160N) and a >150USD model (RT-N66U), I wouldn't be surprised if the latter one is better, quite a bit.

Again, unless you're living in Kansas City or any major SE Asian city, I doubt any router currently on the market would be a bottleneck anyhow, LAN<->WAN throughput-wise.

Of course, if you have the $$$ and are willing to pay for it, the N66U is certainly a good choice.

The stock firmware would do just fine, IMO, if you have to ask which 3rd party firmware is "better".

Cheers.

[garnet]

@loyukfai:thanks mate. I live in the UK. I have 10 mbit/s cable and will get 20 or 30 mbit/s soon as a free upgrade.While even at 30mbit/s (3 mbyte/s) even my current g router is NOT a bottleneck (I get 3.1 Mbytes/s transfer to my NAS) I can not stream the hi-def video from the NAS (i.e. at 30 mbit/s encoding- my digiral cam corder native). If I can sell my other 2 routers for $50-60 and the NAS for another $40 (in UK) paying $50-60 extra for a future proof (kind of) router is OK.

Questions to the asus owners: You can attach usb stick or a usb HDD to it and use as NAS/ftp. In case you attach usb HDD do you know if it will spin down HDD if unused for a while? My current NAS does this. I wouldn't want a 7k2 HDD to whiz at all times in my living room.