Computers & Electronics

Best Wireless Router 2019

  • Last Updated:
  • Feb 18th, 2019 2:46 am
Deal Addict
Aug 25, 2006
3686 posts
1007 upvotes
death_hawk wrote: Depends on who you're arguing with I guess....
Granted... everyone has a mobile device nowadays so I guess it IS plenty for them.
I'm old though and still prefer wires (and gigabit).


And here's me being old and weird wanting to hook Ethernet to my phone....
Don't get me wrong. I prefer hardwire as well. Just wished 10GbE was easily accomplished at home but it ain't. As for old school, I chose to stay with copper telephone for home and only upgraded Internet to fiber. Beat that lol
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31271 posts
17295 upvotes
bowmah wrote: Just wished 10GbE was easily accomplished at home but it ain't.
Depending on what you need to 10gbps, Infiniband isn't terrible.
As for old school, I chose to stay with copper telephone for home and only upgraded Internet to fiber. Beat that lol
What's a telephone? Face With Tears Of Joy

Just you wait until my city figures out their fiber network.
Hello symmetric gigabit!
Too bad it's like 2 years late... I might actually move before it shows up which makes me sad.
Do you not have anything else to do rather than argue with strangers on the internet
Nope. That's why I'm on the internet arguing with strangers. If I had anything better to do I'd probably be doing it.
Deal Addict
Aug 25, 2006
3686 posts
1007 upvotes
death_hawk wrote: Depending on what you need to 10gbps, Infiniband isn't terrible.


What's a telephone? Face With Tears Of Joy

Just you wait until my city figures out their fiber network.
Hello symmetric gigabit!
Too bad it's like 2 years late... I might actually move before it shows up which makes me sad.
Yes, Gigabit is fast but I want it faster lol The problem for home use is, you have to upgrade all points, PC port, switch etc... It's just too much effort and cost for the benefit. lol

I heard Google is offering Gigabit Internet in Canada soon too?
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31271 posts
17295 upvotes
bowmah wrote: Yes, Gigabit is fast but I want it faster lol The problem for home use is, you have to upgrade all points, PC port, switch etc... It's just too much effort and cost for the benefit. lol
That's why I infinibanded in certain places. It's dirt cheap.
But it has issues too (scaling, distance, etc)
If I could get 10gbps ethernet for the same price.... sign me up!
I heard Google is offering Gigabit Internet in Canada soon too?
"Hello Google? Here's all of my personal information. Internets plz. Thx."

Maybe not quite that extreme.
Vancouver already has a few different gigabit providers in a surprisingly wide service area.
I'm just sad that it's not where I am.
My damn neighbors (as in building, not actual neighbors) have it though.
Do you not have anything else to do rather than argue with strangers on the internet
Nope. That's why I'm on the internet arguing with strangers. If I had anything better to do I'd probably be doing it.
Deal Addict
Aug 25, 2006
3686 posts
1007 upvotes
death_hawk wrote: That's why I infinibanded in certain places. It's dirt cheap.
But it has issues too (scaling, distance, etc)
If I could get 10gbps ethernet for the same price.... sign me up!



"Hello Google? Here's all of my personal information. Internets plz. Thx."

Maybe not quite that extreme.
Vancouver already has a few different gigabit providers in a surprisingly wide service area.
I'm just sad that it's not where I am.
My damn neighbors (as in building, not actual neighbors) have it though.
Fiber is nice. I remember when Canada first rolled out it's first fiber community. 10 up and 10 down was only $35 / month! This was when everyone else was on dial up or some sort of T1 line. The saddest part, Shaw's current 300 down plan gives you 15 mbps UP! ouch. They cannot lay fiber down fast enough.
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31271 posts
17295 upvotes
bowmah wrote: The saddest part, Shaw's current 300 down plan gives you 15 mbps UP!
I know the feeling... I'm still on 100/5. FIVE ducking megabits.

Look, I'm not asking for symmetric from telco based ISPs.
But at least give me something REASONABLE. 5mbps is NOT reasonable in this day and age.
15mbps isn't reasonable.
Video is a thing, even for normies. People upload stuff to Youtube all the time.
Online backups should be a thing. Even if a "proper" backup isn't, every device Google makes has the cloud baked in.

The world is moving to the internet literally.
How can you cripple it so badly?

I've said time and again that I'd be happy with even something like 50/50. Hell 25/25 would do in a pinch.
I don't need gigabit down. I would like gigabit up, but that's mostly a pipe dream unless I live in this specific building.

It's freakin' hilarious that I get faster uploads on my damn phone via LTE.
Not that I can use that for anything because similar telcos have us bent over a barrel there too.

I wonder how the rest of the world would react knowing we have overages that approach $100/GB.....

I'm not salty or anything...
Do you not have anything else to do rather than argue with strangers on the internet
Nope. That's why I'm on the internet arguing with strangers. If I had anything better to do I'd probably be doing it.
Sr. Member
Sep 18, 2004
511 posts
183 upvotes
Toronto ON
I saw a few people in this thread are using Netgear Nighthawk r7000. Guess what, me too :)

I got it way back when it first came out and the stock Netgear firmware wasn't so good though. Luckily I found someone who ported the asuswrt-merlin to the R7000 (http://xvtx.ru/xwrt/) and it was fantastic.

Then maybe a year or two later, there was a point brought up in the discussion that maybe the QoS included in the firmware was licensed only for Asus hardware, so the developer decided to remove that functionality.

It wasn't so bad without it, but it was definitely better with it, which is one of the main selling points with going with Asus in the first place.

Later on, someone in the discussion brought up another developer doing the same thing, but who didn't remove the QoS either. Yes, it's a Chinese developer (https://firmware.koolshare.cn/Koolshare ... ear/R7000/)

Now this is where you might want to stop, as I'm not really one hundred percent certain that the firmware is built properly from the original source with no 'extras' from the gov't, but one of the main purposes of this firmware is to run a proxy to get around the firewall in China, so I have a bit of trust that the developer wouldn't be doing something like this and have backdoors at the same time. Maybe someone on RFD more familiar with it, or who can read the koolshare forums can give more info on this.

Realistically if you're accessing security sensitive sites over https, there isn't much a router can do with your data. It's similar to using VPN on unknown public wireless networks.

I have to say this router/AP is a beast with this firmware though, 100% uptime, no crashes or bugs or slowdowns or anything except always-on wireless internet. You can overclock it safely if you have a gigabit connection and are using the built-in switch, but I'm not familiar with those crazy fast speeds yet.

So maybe OP and others having problems with their r7000 can fix it with a software upgrade instead of a hardware upgrade, for now.

Best router in 2019 is from 2015 for me :) If there are any questions about flashing or configuration I can probably answer too. Cheers
Deal Addict
Aug 25, 2006
3686 posts
1007 upvotes
death_hawk wrote:
I know the feeling... I'm still on 100/5. FIVE ducking megabits.

I'm not salty or anything...
The cable companies just cannot make it work with their current infrastructure. That's why they are scurrying to lay down fiber. Rememebr when cable providers used to slam copper telecoms? The tide has turned. In fact, even before fiber, telco through copper was more stable and did not slow to a crawl at dinner time.

What I am really saying is that I feel for you and everyone who has to put up with 5 up.... Ouch.
Last edited by bowmah on Feb 16th, 2019 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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User avatar
Nov 20, 2004
4702 posts
621 upvotes
kcorscadden wrote: It's going to take a long time before wifi 6 is the standard. Wifi 6 devices are barely even out on the market yet. So the OP wouldn't have anything compatible with this. By the time wifi 6 does become the norm (if it ever does), the router(s) you have recommended will be out of date and need to be upgraded, thus making this purchase pointless till he gets new ipads, cell phones, ps4/xone, etc that's compatible.
2019 phones are expected to ship with wifi ax capabilities. I know the S10 is rumored to come with it. And why wont it ever become the norm?

The main selling point of the Ax is to be able to support a lot of connected devices.

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Nov 15, 2011
2221 posts
1083 upvotes
Saint John
Wiring your home is really not too bad. My family just moved into our first house - a 1950s bungalow with, of course, zero modern wiring.

About a year ago, we did some quite minor renovations to the main-floor bathroom, so I decided to run a cat 6 cable from the family room, where the Bell Fibe line (940 symmetrical - sorry guys) comes in, through the floor and the bathroom wall into the kitchen beside it, where I wanted to put a new upstairs AP (in the middle of the house). Just had to drill a single hole through the floor and install a couple of keystone jacks. I also did my first ever electrical job, splitting power off the outlet in the bathroom to make a new outlet for the AP; this part was a little tricky since the bathroom outlet is GFCI, but I had an electrician friend draw a diagram for me and explain it. The family room is at one end of the house, but all I had to do to get ethernet cable around the room to where it needed to be was pop it under the baseboards. If we weren't doing renos, the whole process would've required removing a couple square feet of drywall and then patching it.

Then, about a month ago, I ran another cat 6 cable from the spot in the kitchen to our upstairs PC, which had been using wifi. It's at the opposite end of the house from the Fibe entrance. This wasn't too difficult either - I fished the cable out the bottom of the wall, added another keystone, then ran cable through the back of the cabinets, drilled a hole through two more walls (just big enough to pass an unterminated cable through), and installed another keystone jack beside the computer.

I'm by no means a handyman - my wife fills that role in our family - but I managed to run ethernet everywhere it needed to be with zero experience. I bought around $150 worth of parts and tools to do it, and now I have everything I need to run ethernet to every room in the place (aside from a few more $3 keystone jacks).

I'm just posting about my experience for those who assume it must hard to run cable - trust me, it's not difficult. Read a couple of how-to's and watch a YouTube video; don't sell yourself short or assume you have to pay someone thousands to do it. If you care about having decent networking performance, it's well worth the small effort required. For a few hours' time and the price of an inexpensive router, I now have gigabit networking at the far end of my house, where I originally had an unstable ~30 mbit wifi connection.
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Aug 15, 2006
4042 posts
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Kingston
xpoint9 wrote: 2019 phones are expected to ship with wifi ax capabilities. I know the S10 is rumored to come with it. And why wont it ever become the norm?

The main selling point of the Ax is to be able to support a lot of connected devices.

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Yes, I know all new technology will come ready for wifi 6, but that doesn't answer the OP's scenario. He has iPad's, phones, ps4/xone, etc that are not wifi 6 compatible, so on top of investing in a wifi 6 router, he would then to upgrade of those devices as well to get the full use of that router. Simply put, not realistic as unless the OP can afford to dump thousands of $$$ to replace all his current tech, it just simply isn't going to happen. So he's gonna invest in Wifi 6 router that none of his equipment can fully utilize thus the router is pointless. Why spend extra $$$ on a new technology that he can't use with the current equipment?
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Nov 20, 2004
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kcorscadden wrote: Yes, I know all new technology will come ready for wifi 6, but that doesn't answer the OP's scenario. He has iPad's, phones, ps4/xone, etc that are not wifi 6 compatible, so on top of investing in a wifi 6 router, he would then to upgrade of those devices as well to get the full use of that router. Simply put, not realistic as unless the OP can afford to dump thousands of $$$ to replace all his current tech, it just simply isn't going to happen. So he's gonna invest in Wifi 6 router that none of his equipment can fully utilize thus the router is pointless. Why spend extra $$$ on a new technology that he can't use with the current equipment?
Personally I like to spend a little extra and futureproof on the things that I know are coming in the near future. I might have 10 devices that only support wifi ac, but I add couple more devices that now support AX, I'd rather have a router that can support the new devices to the fullest extent. Since my devices are few years old, I plan on buying a new phone, a laptop a router, and few other items this year and I will definitely be considering a wifi ax router since I am sure all those things will come equipped to handle wifi ax.
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Aug 15, 2006
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Kingston
xpoint9 wrote: Personally I like to spend a little extra and futureproof on the things that I know are coming in the near future. I might have 10 devices that only support wifi ac, but I add couple more devices that now support AX, I'd rather have a router that can support the new devices to the fullest extent. Since my devices are few years old, I plan on buying a new phone, a laptop a router, and few other items this year and I will definitely be considering a wifi ax router since I am sure all those things will come equipped to handle wifi ax.
That's your choice, but realistically it's going to take yrs before wifi 6 takes over the market. So by the time it takes over the market, the router you bought to futureproof will be obsolete and you'll need a new one. My point is that you'll never make full use of that router since pretty much all of your devices aren't wifi 6 compatible, thus spending more money on a novelty device at this point is kind of meaningless.
Deal Addict
Nov 18, 2015
2684 posts
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Cucumference wrote: I would try to get at least some of these stuff wired up. I don't think many consumer router swill handle this many devices satisfyingly, especially if you play some of these console online.
eh I would throttle the bandwidth on phones, security. you aren't downloading much on phones. stuff like that will help for sure.
Sr. Member
May 15, 2017
722 posts
630 upvotes
Bc Canada
Always wondered, what’s wrong the wireless modem provided? I have Shaw internet 300 in my house with multiple devices using the provided hardware and constantly get 320-330mb down

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