Need new router

[OlderThanDirt]

I dumped the Asus router when I was doing a house renovation and installed a Ubiquiti Unifi mesh system with all of the mesh points hardwired. The Asus initial attempt at a mesh system was a mess. The Unifi system performance and remote management is in a different league.

[Robotron2k84]

There’s no doubt that AC routers and the software that runs them were designed prior to mesh becoming a market force. Much of the blame for router instability lies with the chipset vendors themselves, and not the router manufacturers, as the MFRs build to a spec, and then the chipset intellectual property is locked down to where the MFR needs to sacrifice technical ability to satisfy the wireless maker’s secrecy and IP demands.

This leads to the aforementioned dependence on ancient Linux kernels and drivers that haven’t been refactored since 2012. Just to keep the gravy train rolling.

Mesh was a paradigm change, in the sense that it gave a break to other companies to start competing on performance other than STA<-->BSS. Qualcomm got heavily involved in this space and upset Broadcom and others players dipped their toes, but left when it was clear their technology was inferior.

All that said, mesh is hella-expensive for basically being a repeater radio-set, and while I get that there are people willing to pay handsomely for the hardware and ease of use, you wouldn’t catch me dead paying so much for what can be done already with surplus hardware and an afternoon setting up a client repeater bridge. Especially to a company that has behaved in a less-than-stellar way as an internet citizen: dodgy stock deals, funding Iran, lax security practices and refused to honor the GPL, to name a few.

[crufflers]

TP-LINK WiFi Router AC1750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit (Archer C7)

$60 or so or $40 for a "renewed" one on Amazon.

[Robotron2k84]

[deerdeerdeer]

Are their any routers for under $50?

Hell yeah, buy a combo on Amazon.

[crufflers]

In the price range OP asked for... you cannot be too concerned about blazing, cutting-edge performance... but Archer C5, C7, C8 can be in the price range and new sales happen hourly on unstable sources like Amazon Marketplace. Last I looked there was a AC1900, C8 for $59. That's the one I would get today near the $50 mark the OP listed.

CHEAP as possible? C5 for $33... for that price, it works. What more can you expect?

[Robotron2k84]

If you have the inclination, get one of the NIB T-Mobile gen1 home hotspot boosters, which is really an Asus RT-AC68U and use DD-WRT to restore the Asus CFE to remove the T-Mobile firmware lock.

These can be found on eBay, sometimes for dirt cheap, new.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185148235443?epid=1280583684&hash=item2b1bb1deb3:g:uaoAAOSwJ5FhhZ1v

$21 + shipping

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_T-Mobile_Cellspot

There is a very high likelihood of bricking a router in this attempt, permanently without JTAG recovery. However, for the price it may be worth the time.

[crufflers]

OpenWRT runs on the Archer C7, but the unit itself is on the slower side

What do you think about the TP-LINK AX3000 ? I have one as a backup (sealed new in the box) to a old Nighthawk AC1750.

Should I just swap them because the TP-Link is significantly faster?

[Robotron2k84]

[crufflers]

OK, thanks. So maybe I upgrade a Archer C7 with it, hahahah.

[wpage]

Craigslist, facebook marketplace...

[Cowboy T]

What’s a good ,secure router than can be had for under $50?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

An older PC running either OpenBSD or GNU/Linux. There are some ready-made OpenBSD firewall configs out there. Running GNU/Linux, you should also be able to find lots of good info.

How good are you at the UNIX/Linux command line?

[crufflers]

An older PC running either OpenBSD or GNU/Linux. There are some ready-made OpenBSD firewall configs out there. Running GNU/Linux, you should also be able to find lots of good info.

How good are you at the UNIX/Linux command line?

I wonder if there are any of those little pfSense boxes for $50 now.

[Robotron2k84]

If you have the inclination, get one of the NIB T-Mobile gen1 home hotspot boosters, which is really an Asus RT-AC68U and use DD-WRT to restore the Asus CFE to remove the T-Mobile firmware lock.

These can be found on eBay, sometimes for dirt cheap, new.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185148235443?epid=1280583684&hash=item2b1bb1deb3:g:uaoAAOSwJ5FhhZ1v

$21 + shipping

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_T-Mobile_Cellspot

There is a very high likelihood of bricking a router in this attempt, permanently without JTAG recovery. However, for the price it may be worth the time.

I'm just posting an update to say that I just flashed a T-Mo TM-AC1900 to an RT-AC68U successfully as a test and a donor router to a friend.

I followed this How-To, exactly and worked perfectly:

https://www.bayareatechpros.com/ac1900-to-ac68u/

Total cost was $35 with shipping.

Now, I'm not saying go out and do this without knowing and understanding what is at stake, but just confirming that the procedure does indeed produce the desired result.

Cheers

[arrix]

Good luck. Personally I'd spend a little more and get at least a WIFI-6 router. You'll get better range and better latency response when you have a busy network.

Something like this. https://amazon.com/NETGEAR-4-Stream-..._dp&th=1&psc=1