As sad as I am to admit it, I'm no longer using my beloved WRT54GL in any installations. The hardware is just too old and can't cut it anymore, especially now that products like Ubiquiti's Unifi system exist, bringing managed AP's to easily affordable levels.

What the APs won't do, however, is replace the router portion of that Linksys. Because of that, I'm looking for something that will make for a great router and nothing more. I don't care if it has 1 LAN port or 20 (unmanaged switches are easy to come by), I just care that it has a good UI for administration purposes, performs well, and gives me a good number of options (QoS would be nice).

Does anyone have a suggestion for a product like this in a similarly consumer-level price? $50-150 works for me. If it has to have wireless in it (seems like it has to these days) that's fine and I can just disable it. I just want to ferret out the product that does the best job at being a reliable router.

The stock firmware on the Asus RT-N66U does all you want.

I have the 802.11ac version, but I have told a bunch of people to get the 802.11n version when cost was an issue. Never had a complaint about either router.

I've been using Asus routers for years with DD-WRT and the hardware seems solid. I've been running stock firmware on these two newer units for about a year now. It does all I want, so I'm fine with keeping it.

We've had one of those at Electric Imp UK (the British Impire) for a year or so now. It runs decidedly warm -- so probably isn't the best choice for power efficiency -- but has been rock-solid.

Peter

Ditto on the N66. I've had on for a month or so, so can't really comment on stability - though in that time it has worked fine. The Asus GUI I'm still getting used to, as a former Tomato user. It is not that it is good or bad, but different, and to quote tanstaafl "That must be bad".

I doubt you'll find a consumer grade router without wireless build in.

I've been pretty happy with my Netgear N600 (WNDR3700v2 and WNDR3800v1) routers, running OpenWRT. Yeah, the UI's not as polished as Tomato, but it will do the same sorts of things. It's got a 4 port Gigabit switch, which was the decider for me. As is usual with consumer routers, they change the chipset more often than the model number, so if you want to run OpenWRT or DD-WRT on it, check compatibility first.

And, yes, I do have 3 of them. One configured as a router/AP downstairs, one as an AP in the attic, and one waiting for me to run Ethernet to the kitchen.

On the recommendation of AndyM I run one of these at the moment...

http://routerboard.com/RB450G

Totally faultless performance, good power usage and loads of useful features.

Nice to tinker with too, even I can figure out some of it !!!

Cheers

Cris

Wow, that RouterBoard hardware looks great and the price looks good too. Can you put OpenWRT or whatever else on it?

(no WiFi)

My parents have a teeny tiny wiring closet in their laundry room, where they currently have an old, failing D-Link router, with two separate APs stationed in more reasonable locations. Small size, low power, heat tolerance, etc. is what they need, and this looks like exactly the right hardware.

The Netgear AC1900 (r7000) is about the fastest/most advanced router you can buy as a consumer today. It's a dual core router with a 1 Ghz CPU. The new Asus RT-AC68U uses the same CPU, but only clocks it up to 800 Mhz. (not that I believe you'll see the difference, but hey). The Netgear's firmware seems much more mature than the Asus' though. The Netgear can also be flashed with DD-WRT should you want to do this. There's already a version available (not sure about the Asus).

What I like about it very much is that it is supposed to have superb range, and it supports dualband and it also features a VPN server (openVPN)

This new Netgear router has been for sale for a while in the US now, but not yet in Europe and I'm really looking at the shops on a daily basis now because I really want to replace my ageing D-Link DIR-655.

Holy crap! A dual-core 1ghz CPU in a router???

Does anyone have any experience with TP-Link? This looks like a good option based on price/features (I'd prefer to NOT have wireless built in). I don't know much about the company (though I might have bought a cheap switch from them before), or what the admin UI would look like.

The products from that Routerboard company look good. The bare board doesn't appeal to me much, since I'd also have to get a case and power adapter, and the total cost would be around $120. That price isn't out of the realm, but I'd like something a little more "off the rack" so to speak.

The Asus seems ok, but a still a little pricey at ~$150...

I've used a TL-WR1043ND router before. It performed reasonably well and was pretty cheap (40 euro or something). Unfortunately I bricked it by doing a simple firmware update. In hindsight, the reason for this was that I changed the the standard IP range from 192.168.1.x to 192.168.0.x because that was the range I used before with my D-Link router. Now, it seems it's not a good idea to flash a router if you've changed the default IP range.
I could have saved it, but that would mean soldering some pins onto the motherboard and reflashing it using a USB to serial adapter. (which I didn't have and would cost me 20 euro or so to get). I ended up binning it.

They seem to also offer them with cases (e.g., this is what I'd get for my parents). Notably absent are any price listings.

Ah, I didn't see that one. Their site isn't the greatest. The have a really nice product search tool, but it doesn't let you narrow by specific product category (like "routers"). That certainly is very inexpensive. Amazon has it for $55 plus $4 shipping, with great reviews (only three, but all glowing).

I'll definitely go with this in the future. Thanks, I think I've found my router

*edit*

I like that it shows that other people bought it with the Ubiquiti Unifi APs. That's exactly why I want this

The Amazon product listing doesn't list what's included in the box. Does this come with the power adapter included?

*edit 2*

Also, it's a shame I can't use this in more situations. Sometimes it's a real PITA to put a lot of ISP's routers into bridge mode, if they even make it possible. It always involved a call to the ISP, which is a PITA in its own right. I'll probably continue to use the routers that most of my clients are set up with. At least I can usually order plain old modems for my small business clients with business cable contracts.

WiFi can be added to some of their boards using expansion cards.

I have another one running in our firework storage container, it runs 2 expansion cards, one for WiFi and one for the 3G connection. I then run a VPN back to home so I have check my IP cameras remotely. All this runs off a Solar system that also powers the lights and alarm system, so it's pretty frugal on the power use. This is the one that runs in the container...

http://routerboard.com/RB411U

They are a great product and the idea is you pick the board with the features you want. They are used in mesh networks a lot, so WiFi is very much something they do.

Cheers

Cris

Roger, I have the same WNDR3700v2 running OpenWRT and works great for me apart from the range. How much range do you get out of yours? Mine gives me no reception in the far reaches of my tiny 2 bed London flat where the old WRT54G would have full reception everywhere.

Tempted to swap it for something else, it is becoming a problem.

Absolutely. Just not the board that was being discussed above.

Cheers

But then again, dignan wasn't interested in a router with wifi either...

I think putting OpenWRT would actually be a retrograde step. It's a real double hit, great hardware matched to brilliant software.

I see you haven't changed, Mark. BTW that's not meant as a compliment.

Given he's looking for something to work with a Ubiquiti AP system, wifi on the router would be totally redundant.

Ouch. Good to hear from you again, Andy!

Play nicely now boys

That's great to hear. I can't wait to have a need for the hardware now But at least I'm prepared. I've already spec'ed out an install for a home user with one of those routerboard routers and a Unifi AP.

Andy, I need some clarification: is the software brilliant, or is designed for people who are brilliant?

Holy cow! The software on this thing drove been freaking NUTS! I was only trying to do some very simple stuff, and I was losing my mind with how overly complicated they've made the interface and the setup in general!

So here's the deal. I was setting this router up at a place that could only get DSL. They use PPPoE with a username and password and that's it. Pretty standard stuff, right? WRONG! I had no freaking clue how to set this up in the Routerboard UI.

I was finally able to set up - in the PPP section - a "PPPoE client," and when I was finished I could see that this "client" (whatever that means in this UI), was actually able to get an IP from the ISP, so it was connected. But nothing worked!

Then there's all this business about master and slave interfaces? Putting aside the issue that I thought the computer industry had moved past this terminology, there was absolutely no explaining what this meant or how to alter these settings.

The experience was miserable, and I ended up having to swap it out for the only router I had in my car, a crappy Linksys E1200. I threw a compact version of DD-WRT on it and disabled the WiFi, but it was very disappointing to not be able to use the Routerboard router. The UI has a steep learning curve, to put it gently, and the documentation is almost nonexistent for the web interface.

I think there are some pretty simple to follow example setups if you Google about.

Sure it's not the sort of system you can expect to rock up at your clients get it all out of the box and expect it to be working in 30 minutes. It's just a different way of doing things, that gives you greater flexibility in the long run.

I was able to figure it out, with a bit of prompting from AndyM and Google. Got quite a complex setup working pretty quickly.

Cheers

Cris

But that's the thing, this was NOT a complicated setup. It shouldn't have taken any time at all. It literally took me about five minutes on the POS Linksys router I resorted to using.

And actually, there was no information I could find online that explained it. If you'd like to explain it now, I'm all ears

That's odd... I had no trouble at all setting up my router, didn't even look at the instructions.

tanstaafl.

I wish I had something like that

After a little while with the Routerboad router, I would have taken that router to it!

Did this not help...

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Initial_Configuration

Cheers

Cris