Hello everyone,
My current router from 2014 is starting to give up and I am searching for a new one to replace it. I have 3 criteria that I would like for my replacement to have:
-
Be relatively new
-
Less than a $150 USD
-
Have enough power to run a network-wide VPN (my old router would max the CPU when running Wireguard and my speeds were very abysmal)
So far, I have found 3 routers that I am thinking of; Dynalink DL-WRX36, Linksys E8451, and Belkin RT3200. Truth be told, I am gravitating towards the Dynalink because it is the best overall for the price point it’s on.
I am hosting nextCloud, Lemmy, a plex_debrid serverc SearXNG, and so many more so I need hardware that is able to at least theoretically match my 1Gbps from my ISP over Wireguard with more computational power left over.
Your advice would be very appreciated.
Thank you.
Assuming your old router might survive as an access point, maybe consider a Protectli FW2B? https://protectli.com/product-comparison/
Way over your budget but if you can swing it the UniFi Dreammachine is amazing. I can’t recommend it enough and was super easy to configure for my fiber internet at the house
Checkout the Banana Pi BPI-R4 (WIFI not available yet) or the older BPI-R3.
I ended up buying a “mini-PC” as my router. It’s quite a bit over your budget, and you’d need an AP of some kind for WiFi. I run proxmox on it, and pipe the NICs through to my OpenWRT VM. The performance is great, and given it has 2.5gbps NICs, it’s somewhat future proof. UK Amazon link to the one I bought: https://amzn.eu/d/1pqfQEk
I run a fanless mini PC with OPNsense and it’s by far the best router I’ve ever had at home. I can keep traffic separate in different VLANs, configure my own firewall rules, run a recursive DNS resolver and use Suricata for intrusion detection and blocking. It cost a bit more upfront but it has been worth it. Instead of attempting WiFi on the OPNsense box I added a consumer WiFi mesh router in access point mode, but any old router would do for this.
Probably not what you’re looking for, but I’m going to note that Turris make some great OpenWRT routers.
Currently running theTurris Omnia, and using both Wireguard and Yggdrasil through it.
