Need a router for my sons dorm room. Recommendations?

[Rob94hawk]

My son is going to Penn State and his landlord says he'll need a router for internet service.

What do you guys recommend for security and speed? Thanks

 

[Ocellaris]

Wireless or wired? I presume wireless because your son can just plug a cable into the wall jack for wired Internet.

Or the room / suite has one connection and you need a router to split it among multiple students?

 

[Skripka]

Shoot, just about any router would do the trick...the question is one of budget (how much you think the kiddo is worth risking breaking something), and how big an area you need to cover.

 

[Rob94hawk]

Wireless or wired? I presume wireless because your son can just plug a cable into the wall jack for wired Internet.

Or the room / suite has one connection and you need a router to split it among multiple students?

Wired and wireless. And he only has one other roomate.

Shoot, just about any router would do the trick...the question is one of budget (how much you think the kiddo is worth risking breaking something), and how big an area you need to cover.

Not really a big area. The walls are solid painted cinderblocks. I'm guessing he's getting it from coax cable.

 

[diizzy]

TP-Link TL-WDR3600/4300, run OpenWRT/LEDE trunk on it and you're all set.

 

[Zepher]

If you have Sprint or T-Mobile service, you can get an Asus one for free. AC66U for Sprint and AC68U for T-Mobile (T-mobile may require a $25 deposit).
I got mine from Sprint last week.

I get full speed with my phone,

 

[Chris2]

I second the Asus AC66U or AC68U if you have the budget for them (the first is around 130 dollars, the other about 170). If you are on a really tight budget and the room will be normal to small, a TP-LINK TL-WR841N should be enough (20 dollars). Just use DD-WRT and it will do the trick for a long time.

 

[goodcooper]

i think i'd be looking at something a bit faster, i wouldn't be surprised if they provide him a VERY fast connection.... if we knew that information we could better suggest equipment

 

[diizzy]

I'd avoid Broadcom hardware like the plauge (Asus routers in general nowdays)....

 

[Track Drew]

his landlord says he'll need a router for internet service

I'm going to assume that landlord = off-campus housing. So not provided by the school. There are 2 likely scenarios then:
-Each unit gets it's own connection, landlord handles billing, so they provide modem.
-Fast connection shared by all units, landlord has some router giving DHCP addresses to routers in the units. Hopefully there's some QOS enabled.

If each unit has their own connection, I'm guessing its the cheapest the local cable company offers. If they share something, you're likely limited by the upstream router.

I'd just make sure it's dual-band. Any modern dual-band router will do 100/100. I'd be surprised if the connection was anywhere near that fast.

Starting in the fall? I'd shop the sales and buy something closer to July/August.

Having the real details would of course help.

 

[silent-circuit]

I'd avoid Broadcom hardware like the plauge (Asus routers in general nowdays)....

Absolutely nothing wrong with the AC66/68U, they're both really solid and quick (having owned an AC68U for a few years now). Sure, Broadcom isn't ideal in that you aren't going to be running third party firmware on it usually, but if it does what you need out of the box... it works fine.

Not everyone wants / needs to dick around with OpenWRT and such.

 

[diizzy]

I'd much rather use QCA hardware which in my personal experience works a lot better.