What is your budget?
In general try to go for Asus, they can mesh and are usually reliable.
If you want something more advanced, look into Ubiquiti, though they will be more expensive, also read the reviews for the different components, some POE switches can get quite hot, so if you don’t need it try and avoid it.
I am on Asus, and have had very little issues related to my router the last few years, but have been eyeing Ubiquiti lately…
I can second the reliability of Asus. Mine is five years old now, and still going strong.
Asus puts a lot of their advertised features behind accepting terms and conditions that have them harvesting and selling your data. You can not agree to it and still use the device. But many of the advertised features won’t work.
Check out ASUS Merlin, it’s a openwrt reimplementation of most of ASUS closed in features
Thanks, ASUS Merlin looks great.
Had an asus mesh system with three different routers for a bit. Worked really well! One of them died though so bought a refurb asus mesh system off Amazon for like $100. Great speed and coverage for a year now no complaints!!
I also second this. I have an Asus router setup with mesh nodes, and it has been running smoothly, especially since I’m hosting a plex server and occasionally multiplayer servers.
The new UniFi switches are surprisingly good. Poe++ without breaking a sweat. I have some of their original line too. You can bake an egg on them.
Running tp-link. So far no issues. Asus is good, tp-link gives you more features on the cheaper models than Asus like vlan if you want it.
I bought an Asus RT-AX53U, it was the cheapest WiFi 6 router with openwrt support
I’ve been happy with Asus & TP-Link using openwrt. I’m curious about the Bananapi ones but it could be a hassle & what I have now works.
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128
for the full list
Does openwrt has dual wan support? I’m considering to try openwrt on my asus router, but I currently use its dual wan failover feature.
Of course it does, anyway it’s normal Linux, so it does everything desktop Linux does, you gonna be of course limited by your device hardware capabilities like RAM or storage, so maybe you won’t be able to deploy a kubernetes stack on your home router but it’ll be doable on a more capable device running OpenWRT like an RPi, PC or NAS;-)
This is exactly what I need. Thanks!
My recommendation falls squarely on the Omada series from TP-Link. It’s their SMB (small-medium business) offering and its very wallet friendly for what it is. Though WiFi 7 stuff is of course not cheap if you want the bleeding edge. I suggest going with the EAP6 series with WiFi 6E. No need to buy the physical controller, instead DIY a router with opnsense or pfsense and the Omada software for managing the APs is what I recommend. You of course need a switch with PoE like TL-SG2008P. PoE is a game changer for making wiring up the APs easy, and I do recommend wiring them because then you don’t need to think about having a strong signal between the APs.
Criteria being stability mainly, all consumer stuff is much more prone to the occasional drop and just plain wonky ness. Another criteria being upgrade path, the Omada stuff can easily be sold when you upgrade because they retain value pretty well (and you can find them used to start with as well). They also don’t ship with the bloat consumer devices come with. With features you don’t need and router+AP combo is fine if you’re in a single room apartment but it doesn’t scale to a multiroom setup well. I’ve used Asus “AI-mesh” and you really waste more money than you save in my experience.
Any WiFi 6 or 7 router in which you can install openwrt and set as a dumb AP connected to an x86 machine running OPNSense or openwrt itself. The redundancy and enhanced control are 10/10 worth it, along with security and stability.
Don’t get a combined AP and router. Make sure they’re separate. That will get you a lot of quality just by doing that.
I feel like you’re conflating combined devices with consumer-grade ones. I’ve had pretty good experiences with Unifi’s all-in-one offerings.
That’s a good point. I haven’t used unifi’s combined devices. I was under the impression that the radio generally works better when not next to the router but maybe that’s old news.
It’s more like radios work better when the designers had a budget to work with
I had many wifi issues due to the layout and structure of my dwelling, and Unifi was the only setup that solved them. I started with my original Orbi (Voxel firmware) mesh setup from my previous home, but performance wasn’t where I wanted it due to the age of the devices. Then I tried the TP-Link w7200 sets from Walmart, but it didn’t meet my needs connecting a remote building on the property.
Unifi are expensive, but I have no regrets. Even added their security cameras to my network when the old system needed replaced.
Any relatively large home made out of reinforced concrete will need multiple access points with cable connections.
I use UniFi myself. My parents have a grandstream setup. They are both very good. Best bang for buck right now is probably tplink omada but those acces points are hideous.
are there any AX routers supported by DD-WRT? all routers your article suggests are AC routers, quick research show no AX routers on support lists
As far as I can see, there may be no AX routers supported under dd-wrt.
There are about 40 AX routers here that appear to be supported by OpenWrt(2 pages).
If you are in Germany, a Fritzbox is probably your best option
I’m personally a fan of microtik products. It’s nice as they have a lot of built in management features. However, the downside is that there is a learning curve to their products which can feel like a vertical wall some times.
Unifi, grandstream, mikrotek are all good options
How big is your place? What speeds does your ISP offer?
One you can put openwrt on and that is fast enough for the highest 802.11 protocol your devices support
How hard is it to put openwrt on any old commodity router if it’s on the compatible devices list? Is it basically just using the old router’s firmware update page and loading the openwrt firmware image?
Thinking about gifting a new wifi access point for one of my friends with a crap router that doesn’t even support 5ghz channels
There is usually a per-router guide on installation. Sometimes you can just use the built-in firmware flashing interface, sometimes you have to do funny things like do that twice in a row, sometimes you need to access a special interface.
I have a gl.inet router and it’s great. Super easy to setup and supports wireguard out of the box. It has some cool travel features as well.
Before buying, look for secondhand ones, many people move to a different house where their previous system becomes obsolete, or they upgraded to a different beast.
