AC 5Ghz wireless router rec? (1 Viewer)

courage

courage

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My cable modem has been blowing up over the last week. After multiple calls and service calls, I'm just gonna replace it and hope for the best.

While I'm at it, will upgrade the wireless router to better serve Club Courage. Anyone have recent success or recommendations for a dual band 2.4/5 Ghz AC router? My basement walls are thick concrete so anything will be an upgrade. Been looking at the Netgear Nighthawk series. Great coverage but read some disturbing stuff about lack of firmware fixes resulting in frequent lockups.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V983Y1Y/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Am pretty sold on the netgear modem. Louisville and my data plan can't yet take advantage of 16 channels but it would be futureproof for $25 more and give some increased speed even on my current plan.
 
I tend to rely on the reviews and rankings at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/. They have the Netgear R7000, Linksys WRT1900AC, and ASUS RT-AC68U in a pretty close ranking. But if you have concrete walls, it's not going to be a perfect situation anyways.

I know I'm not 100% happy with the Netgear range extender I have...I have to reboot the thing about once a week...but that might just be due to the fact that it's trying to work with an older Linksys WRT610 router.
 
I've always have had the best luck with Netgear. Can't stand linksys
 
I have had a Netgear WNDR3400 router for a couple months after my windstream modem/router took a crap and have been very pleased with the range and functionality of it. Customer service was very helpful when I had a problem setting it up. My house is Concrete block construction and it reaches from 1 end to the other.
 
About 6 months ago I replaced a $40 7-8 year old single-band, wireless-G only Linksys router (thing was a real trooper, seriously) with Linksys AC1750 (basically one step down from the 1900AC) - must disrecommend; even after firmware update, wifi strength/range is only marginally better than the old trooper and runs hot requiring regular restarts. To be fair the reason I replaced is that the old one started requiring VERY frequent restarts so there may be other factors in play, but this is over two completely different locations/situations now.

I hate Netgear though - my dad and brother who live together (mega-techies) always buy them and I've had to deal with setup/maintenance for other friends/relatives and besides being a pain in the ass to set up, they always get off-kilter somehow after a while and have to be fiddled with/tweaked to keep working...
 
I ended up with this router
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MG3Q5U8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and this cable modem
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R92CEVU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The modem is overkill at 16x4 channels (not supported speeds by TWC in my area) but was only $20 more than comparable standard options. TWC has been flaky for me lately and their tech support (lol) insists the problems are my router (not true as I've had same down time with either router lately when previously uptime was solid). The new modem ran flawlessly for 2 days until last nite when I had an outage for an hour. It's enough to make me want to switch to ATT Uverse.

The router is great. Easy setup, and wireless is blazing. Spot tested locations in the basement before and after upgrade with "wifi sweetspots" app and bandwidth is roughly 5x greater. :D
 
courage said:
I ended up with this router
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MG3Q5U8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and this cable modem
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R92CEVU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The modem is overkill at 16x4 channels (not supported speeds by TWC in my area) but was only $20 more than comparable standard options. TWC has been flaky for me lately and their tech support (lol) insists the problems are my router (not true as I've had same down time with either router lately when previously uptime was solid). The new modem ran flawlessly for 2 days until last nite when I had an outage for an hour. It's enough to make me want to switch to ATT Uverse.

The router is great. Easy setup, and wireless is blazing. Spot tested locations in the basement before and after upgrade with "wifi sweetspots" app and bandwidth is roughly 5x greater. :D
Click to expand...

Look like great choices...I've read a lot of good things about the ASUS products. Hopefully your provider smartens up. I had similar issues with our provider. I ended up plugging one of my spare PC's into the modem via a switch, and then had it periodically log a ping to an outside server (Google's DNS at 8.8.8.8). That eliminated the router as a potential cause.
 
I had a ton of problems that I couldn't trace to either the cablemodem or Comcast specifically. Switched to Verizon FiOS and got their semi-proprietary range extender (basically a separate box that you connect to the FiOS box at the TV in the room you want to extend to). Complete coverage throughout the house now and it's worked flawless except for one really, really weird thing.

My mom comes up periodically and she has a Kindle device that locks up my WiFi. It's happened with Comcast and Verizon, and happened with the Comcast cablemodem, the Verizon FiOS modem, and with 2 different WiFi appliances (one Netgear, one Linksys). I have to kick her off the network and reboot the router and WiFi appliance and I'm good to go again.
 

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