What is the best router for you?  That’s a tricky question to answer without knowing your environment and needs.  Chances are that it is not the latest $400 routers with the big numbers on the box like AC5300.

For small businesses, we recommend our custom-built enterprise grade router and wireless access solution that is a fraction the cost of commercial routers.

For home users, a good place to start is the sweet spot where price meets performance.  For routers, the sweet spot as of spring 2016 is an AC1900 router.  The AC1900 routers that most users cannot go wrong with are the NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 R7000 and the ASUS RT-AC68U.  Those who already own a decent wireless router, but the hardware is just not able to achieve the full gigabit wired speed, may consider relegating the wireless router to just wireless duty and use a wired router that is capable of gigabit speed as the Internet router.  The EdgeRouter Lite by Ubiquiti is a good choice to fill the role as an Internet router.

At 802.Tech4U, we actually prefer separating our Internet routing duty and wireless access duty into two separate devices to achieve a more robust and stable network while maximizing the wired and wireless performance.  Pairing the EdgeRouter Lite with an enterprise grade wireless access point like the UniFi AP AC Lite is a good way to achieve the separation of Internet and wireless duties and still remain within the price point of an all-in-one consumer router.

Recommended Routers for NextLight and 100+Mbps Internet Service:

1. NETGEAR NightHawk AC 1900 (R7000)
2. ASUS RT-AC68U
3. Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (ERL-3) + Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC Lite (UAP-AC-LITE) or existing wireless router

The bottleneck in most home and small business networks is the Internet connection.  An 8-year old 802.11n router is still adequate to handle any Internet connections that are below 75Mbps.  However, with Longmont’s NextLight or Xfinity’s Internet Blast plans where the Internet connection exceeds 100Mbps, you will definitely need a router that can keep pace.  For NextLight, our recommended routers are excellent choices since they will be able to handle the gigabit Internet connection and support the fastest wireless devices that are currently available.  See NextLight - Are You Up to Speed? for our testing  of the recommended routers on NextLight gigabit fiber Internet service.

So if you find yourself in a store and the clerk is recommending a >$200 router, just politely decline.  The only reason to get something more than an AC1900 router is if your household have a bunch of wireless devices that are streaming or gaming at the same time.  Then a tri-band router may make your wireless network more efficient by allocating devices to one of three different Wi-Fi networks, but they won't make your network run any faster.  To better understand wireless network speed, read Wi-Fi Speed - It Takes Two to Tango.

802.Tech4U can install, configure, and optimize your router to fully take advantage of your Internet connection speed from NextLight, Xfinity, and CenturyLink.  On top of that, you will own your router and will not have to make perpetual payments for leasing the equipment from your internet service provider.