Linksys or ASUS router?

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Valnar

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I need a quick recommendation. My company is looking to standardize on a home router for some of our remote users. I've been away from this space for years.

We'd want the latest wireless standard (either 802.11n or AC if it's currently reliable). 4 port switch, etc. I'd prefer Broadcom based, although it doesn't necessarily have to support dd-wrt. We probably won't go through the trouble.

Linksys and ASUS make a boatload of models. We'd be looking for something in the upper half tier, though not necessarily the top most expensive model. Having a ton of bells & whistles like in the gaming routers would actually be non-desirable.

So recommendations for a single Linksys or ASUS to look at? From there we're order one of each and try them out. Thanks.
 
TP-Link TL-WDR3600 is a very solid choice if you go the OpenWRT route and you can customize it as you wish including VPN. The WD Net N750 series are even better but they're EOL so they might be hard to find. If you're going Linksys or Asus you're most likely looking at Broadcom or Ralink solutions. In my experience Atheros (now QCA) are much more solid in the long run. I have a bunch or WDR3600s and N750s running and they're doing a very good job acting as gateways (with/without VPN), APs etc but as I said, running OpenWRT. The stock firmware is probably as good as any other brand.
//Danne
 
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i have the RT-AC68R. Fantastic Router. Would work well in a business environment to. Linksys is shit anymore and with them being a subsidy of Belkin i cant bring myself to even look at them.
 
Asus RT-AC66U has been my router of choice lately for homes.
 
I vote for ASUS as well. I have both the RT AC66U and the RT-N66u. Both are working great and are easily flashable with different firmware.

Also the suggestion for TP-Link is a good choice as well. Personally I would stay away from Linksys these days.
 
If DD-WRT support in the future is a concern, and you want a fast router, I would check out Kong's list of supported routers for the new Arm builds:

http://desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/
http://desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/Readme
There are three AC based Asus models being supported currently. These use the same new builds people are working on for the R7000 (arguably the performance benchmark for DD-WRT supported routers)

Personally I bought a new Netgear AC router (R6250) and it has been chugging along for something like 40 days with zero hiccups on the stock firmware. I've been doing a lot of VPN, streaming, and gaming. I have been waiting for it to screw up (even once!) so I have a reason to flash DD-WRT on it. However it just keeps working...

I think Linksys went to shit and the open source community is moving away from them as well. One of my friends just bought two new TP-Link routers for his house (3K sq ft) and he had to put OpenWRT on them before they functioned correctly for more than a few days. Been running fine on OpenWRT though. Be very careful to double check model numbers and versions with TP Link though, they frequently have multiple hardware revisions of the same product.
 
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ocellaris said:
If DD-WRT support in the future is a concern, and you want a fast router, I would check out Kong's list of supported routers for the new Arm builds:

http://desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/
http://desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/Readme
There are three AC based Asus models being supported currently. These use the same new builds people are working on for the R7000 (arguably the performance benchmark for DD-WRT supported routers)

Personally I bought a new Netgear AC router (R6250) and it has been chugging along for something like 40 days with zero hiccups on the stock firmware. I've been doing a lot of VPN, streaming, and gaming. I have been waiting for it to screw up (even once!) so I have a reason to flash DD-WRT on it. However it just keeps working...

I think Linksys went to shit and the open source community is moving away from them as well. One of my friends just bought two new TP-Link routers for his house (3K sq ft) and he had to put OpenWRT on them before they functioned correctly for more than a few days. Been running fine on OpenWRT though. Be very careful to double check model numbers and versions with TP Link though, they frequently have multiple hardware revisions of the same product.
Click to expand...

That's not an issue with TP-Link, the Asus routers are _bad_ in terms of 3rd party firmware as they have binary blobs (drivers). What 3rd party firmwares are in that case a mix of Asus provided firmwares with some recompiled software.
//Danne
 
Why not consider something like Meraki? If you're going to have to support these things all over the place, a single pane of glass to manage the configurations/assets would make life very easy. It, of course, comes at a cost. A Meraki Z1 would be a good option though I only have direct experience with MR16 APs and MX80 security appliances.
 
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