Router recommendations?
Hello my fellow tildestians (tilderinos?) - I'm looking to upgrade a very old home router (a hand-me-down linksys of some variety). I game quite a lot (my computer is connected via ethernet to the current router) (often while others folks are streaming shows elsewhere in the house) so preferably something that is able to handle that? Maybe something that would allow a later upgrade with mesh? I don't know what a mesh is but I see them recommended in a lot of these "best router of 2026" lists so maybe that's something I need to look into.
I've seen a lot of recommendations for asus and tp-link and ubiquiti? I am not super technically inclined so ease of set up is a nice bonus but I'm willing to put in the effort if needed >_< Budget is around ~300 usd. Blessings be if you have the time and knowledge to spare for me :) thank you!
(also, if this is in the wrong topic please relocate me with my sincerest apologies)
Mikrotik. Very reliable. Recommended to me by a sys admin. Steer away from DLink.
It definitely depends on your technical inclination and your house design.
If you need mesh, there are lots of similar options out there. Folks seem to like eero but you can look around at reviews -- as far as I can tell, all of these have apps for managing your network and other smart functionality that I'm not interested in. But you do you!
I have heard very good things about GL.iNet. Some of the best price/performance ratio in modern networking, but they aren't too technical to set up. The Flint 3 or 3e would serve you well for the next decade, I imagine.
I use an OpenWRT one, myself, and I'm entirely happy with it. But we only have 100/100Mbps fiber -- some folks claim it struggles with gigabit speeds. And it's only wifi 6, not 7 like the Flints and most modern mesh.
Ubiquity is allegedly quite good but I haven't used them at all. Great reviews, but... cloud integration isn't something I want, and all their offerings seem to be a solid $100 more than the equivalent GL.iNet alternative. Still, if you want a weird wifi egg instead of a dead wifi spider, the Dream Router 7 seems lovely. Just pricey. And they seem to target a slightly more technical user than the average router, offering some nice customization while keeping things mostly plug-and-play.
Anyway, I would caution you to think twice about cloud integration -- it's nasty for personal privacy (who knows who eero sells your activity to, and Google is surely harvesting plenty as well) -- and it's literally a backdoor in your network infra that you can never fix. A lot of the companies offering apps and cloud services for your router are increasingly leaning on upsells, so prepare yourself for upsell popup dialogs when you're trying to open a port, gated functionality, and updates that break old functionality in favor of a new paid alternative. And of course ads in the interface! Unlike a smart TV, you can't just leave your router disconnected from the internet.
FWIW I run OpenWRT on an old Linksys 1900AC with only Wifi 5. Symettrical 1gbps fiber.
Ethernet handles gig just fine. Wifi maxes out at the bandwidth available with Wifi 5, on the order of 400mbps.
I will caveat that I'm only using WPA2, as I'm in a somewhat rural area where anybody that could sniff my wifi packets would have to be in my yard.
That, and the DNS is a bit crap, but I suspect that is in no small part due to my own privacy-over-convienience config.