I don't own any of the newer AC routers but more than likely any will be better than what you have.As the title says, I'm looking for recommendations for a new router. This crappy one from AT&T has terrible wi-fi signal and is very susceptible to interference. I don't have a lot of money, and it needs to be fairly easy to set up.
Thanks
What an eye opener! In my living room there must be 10 different signals, all stronger than my router. Thanks for the info.If you have an android, try this. You can see if everyone in your area is on the same channel and move yours if necessary.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en
[video=youtube;M7PTIn-dW4c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7PTIn-dW4c[/video]
Cliffs notes on my way to bed. I'll try to follow up tomorrow;
ANYTHING is better than what the carrier provides. ( I deal with that crap daily for work. Sweet mother of God I want to pimp slap the carriers some days for the crap they provide to customers)
Linksys is adequate, and as long as you dont use torrents (if you dont know what those are, you dont use them) you will be fine. Just stay away from the "smart" routers they provide. They require an account to operate and they may add/remove features at their whim.
Buffalo Networks and ASUS are two more good brands.
DONT TRY TO COVER TOO MUCH GROUND WITH A SINGLE WIRELESS AP. Yes those caps are intentional. Several well placed Wireless Access Points "whispering" are exponentially more efficient than a single WAP "screaming" as loud as the FCC will allow.
If you ONLY want internet and dont use local file sharing in the house, anything a/g/n is fine. You only NEEEEEEED 802.11ac if you are accessing stuff locally and need it at very high speeds. Otherwise 802.11 a/g/n is fine for most applications.*
Oh, and wireless repeaters are a bad idea no matter how advanced they are. (unless they relay the signal through a physical medium like powerline. wifi to wifi repeaters suck on multiple levels)
Lots of other good info in the thread so far.
*I dont care if your provider is giving you up to gigabit fiber. The remote servers like CNN, Foxnews, Youtube, etc will throttle individual connections so you cant utilize your provider's full speed. So real world, for most people, the limited speeds a/g/n provides (25-75 mbits) is more than adequate. Imagine Fenway giving you the keys to the Bugatti; Sure you can drive it 200mph on the INGO track (Local Area Network) but as soon as you leave the INGO compound and drive on the streets of Carmel (the Internet) you are limited to between 30 and 55 MPH. (In most cases, it only matters what the world will let you do, not what your device can do)
Who is this...Fenway?
I did a lot of research when I upgraded my router. I had the same issue with the crappy Brighthouse router.
I ended up with an ASUS AC87R. Performance is awesome. I have multiple devices (kids mostly) streaming wireless pretty much all day. I have a channel dedicated to the adults so I never have an issue even if they are loading the other channel down.
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AC87R-Wireless-AC2400-Gigabit-Router/dp/B00MG3Q5U8
Good luck.
I must respectfully disagree. I have a couple of routers that are supported by dd-wrt and both perform terribly on wireless when running dd-wrt. If you have a deep understanding of networking and want to take advantage of running a linux OS on your router then ok, but the average user will get little to no benefit from dd-wrt and can actually see worse performance. Additionally there are security patches to keep up with.Before you spend money on new hardware take a look to see if your existing router will run dd-wrt firmware. Mine does and it has been fantastic.
www.dd-wrt.com | Unleash Your Router