I am helping my sister select new home router. The price limit is $150. It should be easy to set up, reliable and fast as well as compatible with Comcast. I appreciate any suggestions and recommendations.
Thanks
Anything will work if you just need a modem and the All-in-one after. Do you currently have digital phone? Are you leasing a eMTA from them? Are you a Fiber customer for Gig speed or still using coax. Is the current unit on a splitter that is connected to the line outside?
Smallnetbuilder.com will give you the best info. If all that you are wanting is better and faster WiFi, look at the Engenius EAP1750h. It comes with the Power Over Ethernet unit and the range runs to about 100'. It is just an access point, which most people just want better wifi. Instead of keep buying all-in-one-units, go with separate components like I did. See the info in my System Specs.
Last edited by bro67; 15 Apr 2017 at 21:41.
Thanks for the information ... I'll pass it along to her. At this point, she is leaning toward the router I have, which is ASUS RT-N56U or the new model of it.
I take it you are retired too. Ain't it grand!!!! Enjoy the ride my friend!
ASUS has had a bad habit of not updating Security holes. Make sure that you check the last firmware if there are still risks.
Thanks for the advice. The performance from my router is good, but I understand what you are saying about security. I just updated to the most recent firmware. For a couple of years, they didn't have any reliable firmware updates at all. Finally, they released one around the end of March. It certainly is a consideration, and thank you for mentioning it. Hopefully, they are getting their act together on security now.
The A/P I have is one that waited until I had to buy a new NAS and also replaced my laptop with a Macbook Air. I was dying when I was moving large photo data on my machine and my wife would be doing stuff on her laptop that could eat up bandwidth, along with my son.
I went with the whole separate components to allow replacing the switch and A/P, which are normally the two reasons that we end up buying new equipment all of the time. It also allowed me for more range and better placement of the AP, instead of having it in my Basement.
I have used Smallnetbuilder for a while and it is the best way to show a person the technical aspects when they are asking about speed and multiple users that are bandwidth hogs.
If you both are on the same providers, it should be no issue setting it up at your place and then take it to her place to connect it and connect her machine, then set up to have it show with the click of a mouse her Network info. Windows 10 has a tool out there that you can actually put it on the Background for desktop. Easier to just use a small TSR that you can pull it from. Same as the netsh wlan show all stuff when she is having issues.
I found that Channel 3 & 7 works great in my area for Wireless-n. Channels 100-112 for Wireless-ac. Engenius came up with a good firmware when they started to offer better features that you could only get with third party firmware.
I appreciate all the information, but now she has decided to keep her router and modem. She did change to 40 GHz, and that was enough for her. Again, thank you for all the advice ...
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