[Meekro]

I've used Apple routers for many years, but since they've been discontinued I wonder what I'll do when I need to replace them. All the major alternatives seem to have crap software that requires frequent reboots and has security issues.

Can anyone recommend an awesome wireless router that works great off the shelf? I don't want to have to learn how to flash it with DD-WRT.

[an_opabinia]

In my experience, the biggest gain is from separating the router from the wireless AP. It lets you choose among more affordable, purpose built and higher performance devices.

Specifically I would recommend the TP-Link EAP line as a wireless AP (the $50 EAP225v3 is very good). Extremely simple to configure. Routers that perform well require configuration unfortunately, especially economical ones like the Microtik ($50). It lacks out of the box settings for port forwarding and hairpin NAT, though it has the simplest secure VPN setup I have ever seen. The only router that competes with its performance (ie can route gigabit Internet at full speed) with easy config is the Cisco RV340, which costs $220 and is 3 years old.

Apple discontinued its wireless routers because they were bad. Apple routers run an ancient and naturally no longer patched version of NetBSD. They have terrible wireless performance on the worst Broadcom chipset with awful quirks. They mix with non Broadcom wireless devices extremely poorly (typically Atheros is the high performance pick). They are extremely slow, not at all suitable for gigabit Internet. If you update the port forwarding they must restart, and take down your internet. However, they are basically purpose built for correct macOS and iPhone multi-AP WiFi hand-off. There are things they do that not even enterprise hardware does right or may ever do right, simply because Apple does not document the magic that makes it possible. Or because Apple uses such bad chipsets with so many quirks, that only those quirks all working together do things go right. If I were you, I’d eBay away your 7 year old Airport Express to some greater fool, and use that surprisingly large amount of money to buy good stuff.

Anyway, most people shove their wireless AP into a bookshelf, taking at least 30% of their internet bill worth of performance and lighting it on fire. People use mesh networking wireless, like the Eero, something so abjectly bad it boggles the mind, because they’d rather spend $300 once to only use 50% of their internet’s monthly value than $10 once on Ethernet cable to get 100% of it. Sometimes they buy Ubiquiti hardware, which is ancient and overpriced at this point, and wind up paying for some internet configuration license that makes no sense. I really pity the people paying a monthly fee for mesh wireless configuration. This stuff is extremely marketing driven, it is in reality just the same exact commodities (two possible wireless chipsets and Linux) remixed into whatever crap Google thinks will convince people to let them gather home networking telemetry.

But configuring a Microtik is not easy. So there you go.

[Meekro]

I'm surprised to hear you recommending TP-Link. They've had several serious security issues that have been discussed on HN[1]-- do they worry you?

Also, why do you dislike Eero? Someone else on this thread recommended them, and they do have many glowing reviews.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=tp-link

[msh]

I used to have apple gear, replaced it with a edgerouter for a while but that was too much of a bother. Now I got a amplifi HD which is more or less a apple experience in a good way.

[beamatronic]

Eero

[post_break]

I almost went full Unifi, got lazy and got Eero. So far everything has been fantastic. It's not perfect but it works and delivered on its promise. Speed is fast, it's not Wifi 6 but neither are any of my devices. Paid full price too, not a shill here.

[WorldMaker]

Ubiquiti has a consumer/prosumer brand called Amplifi now. It's got the ease of something like Eero but the decade of experience of Unifi. (They also already have a WiFi 6 mesh router at the top of the line on the prosumer side.)

[hedora]

I recommended an Amplifi to some friends that aren’t computer-savvy, and didn’t hear back. (Their previous router was crashing frequently.)

I visited them a few months later and noticed it, so I asked about it.

They had kind of forgotten about it. There were zero problems setting it up and zero problems since. They said they thought it was kind of pricey.

If I remember right, it was $50 more than the cheapest (but terrible) one with similar specs. It was $100 less than an expensive, terrible and comparable one.

I can’t imagine a more favorable review of consumer networking gear. :-)

Also, I have had zero issues with the Ubiquiti access point I use at home. I have a pcengines apu2 OpenBSD router, so I can’t say much about their routers.

[WorldMaker]

Very similarly, I recommended Amplifi to my parents. They've had a couple issues with it, but that's due to a complicated bit of their new house more than Amplifi itself.

The house they just moved into had a strange audio LAN wired through the house when it was built. The audio LAN had a couple CAT-5E ports for "expansion" (presumably?) on each floor just about perfectly located for WiFi AP backhaul. So I worked with my parents on a plan to try three of Amplifi's routers rather than one AP and two "Satellites".

This seemed to work alright. The Amplifi phone app wasn't great about setting up a multi-AP mesh of that sort just yet (as opposed to the focused use case of one router/AP and several "satellites") and didn't always have the best experience (in navigation/details), but other than UX complaints, the system just works as expected.

However, my parents then discovered that there were "hidden" components also wired to the Audio LAN somewhere between the primary Audio LAN router and the "expansion ports", which meant that some of the system's speakers stopped operating. (It would have been great to have a wiring diagram of the whole LAN. We did a lot of trial and error discovery on this.)

So my parents decided to "turn off" the backhaul by reconnecting it to the Audio LAN. There was angsty confusion that they "broke" the WiFi because they ignored/forgot my explicit instructions to disconnect the router's WAN cables on the house ports that were now again Audio LAN ports. As I had expected, once disconnected from the confusing (to people and devices alike) Audio LAN, the Amplifi Routers straightened themselves out and switched to a more traditional bridged mode ("wireless backhaul") as if they were mere "satellites".

According to the math I did, my parents paid a lot less for that experiment with all Amplifi routers than if they'd tried it with "full" routers of any of the other brands we'd comparison shopped (and none of them seemed to offer an ala carte buying experience similar to Amplifi's section of Amazon), though obviously more than if they'd bought only one router and two satellites of any of the other brands in the first place. The extra LAN port on the Amplifi router is still critical to them on one of the floors (a home office VOIP system that "requires" a wired connection) and they couldn't easily swap at least one of the routers for a Satellite anyway.

Other than the crazy backhaul experiment confusion, my parents haven't had any problems. I don't think we could have ran that experiment with any of the other brands. My parents seem happy with the purchase and the quality of their WiFi on all three floors, which was the important thing for them, and I get the feeling they were happy with the price despite "over-paying" a tad due to the experiment.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

My only concern with eero is that they're owned by Amazon. It might be fine, but it's the kind of thing that makes me nervous, particularly with "smart" systems.