Request: I’m looking for something with high reliability rather than high speed. It needs to support 30+ devices.
Additional information: My house is about 30m (100ft) long, and the internet comes in by ethernet at one end of it. I’m happy to use a Wi-Fi extender if needed.
Context:
I’ve been having issues with both my current and previous routers. Devices are randomly unable to communicate over the network for several seconds at a time. Both ethernet and Wi-Fi are affected.
I live in Australia, so even the slowest router should be more than fast enough.
I have a large number of automated devices that need to stay connected at all times - even 5 second network dropouts are difficult to deal with. Internet dropouts are handled gracefully.
Any suggestions are gratefully received.
In tech, nothing is for life.
But, I would recommend something you can install OpenWRT or OpenSense. If sorting out hardware isn’t for you, I have a Ubiquity UDM Pro and love it. I miss some of the fine tuning of OpenWRT, but the extra security features on the UDM seem worth it to me.
If you want something cheaper ive been running an Ubiquiti Edgerouter X pretty much non stop problem free for about 5-6 years now.
The EdgeRouter X is a great piece of kit, but also getting harder to acquire, and it’s unclear what Ubiquiti’s roadmap is for support. I installed one in my in-laws about 4 years ago, and my brother’s house about 5 years ago. Both trucking along strong. My in-laws use a TPLink omada 245 AP in standalone mode. My brother has 2, a 225 and a 245, plus a controller so that AP roaming and band steering work.
I also have a pair of omada APs, one at each end of the house, but for a router I use a HP ProDesk 600G1 DM, modified to handle an extra Ethernet jack via the m.2 e-key slot. It runs Opnsense, but I did also run Sophos XG on it for about a year.
Both are good but I’m a tinkerer so I switched to Opnsense