It's infuriating that this is necessary -- now that printers are pretty optional and those of us that need one have settled on Brother laser-printers, consumer routers are now the 21st century home appliance of "holy shit why is this the worst device I own?"
I have a home network powered by Asus routers, but that's only after years of trial-and-error with other brands (Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link). The fact that Asus is the "crappy inconsistent B-minus grade devices" company normally and that's way above average in routers is a massive step forwards.
The extended features are a joke and I have to reset the routers maybe once a year at worst but they're the first solid home internet connection I've ever had.
If I have to go through the mayhem again, I'll be cribbing from guides like this, but I'll be really really angry about it.
Part of the problem is, most consumer-grade routers use CPUs that can kind of get by most of the time on passive cooling. Then when the weather is hot or your usage is above-average, it has problems.
Most people want to avoid active cooling on a router, because you've got it out in the open for line-of-sight / signal propagation purposes, and there's kind of a reliability argument for avoiding moving parts.
I'm not trying to say the only advantage of a pro setup is having fans on it, but it's definitely one of the advantages.
I use my Internet carrier's WiFi 6 router/modem combination. It works fine. It's free, and I don't get a discount for bringing my own equipment. I spent zero time configuring anything.
I have Internet. I haven't noticed any problems making Zoom calls or playing games online. What I don't know about my bufferbloat score doesn't really hurt me.
Anything I host is in a VPS so I don't need any advanced routing or VLANs.
A crapload of people have gone remote, though. Meaning they're experiencing the normal hiccups and drops as "oh shit I can't show up to my meeting". So they can't ignore it anymore.
I have a home network powered by Asus routers, but that's only after years of trial-and-error with other brands (Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link). The fact that Asus is the "crappy inconsistent B-minus grade devices" company normally and that's way above average in routers is a massive step forwards.
The extended features are a joke and I have to reset the routers maybe once a year at worst but they're the first solid home internet connection I've ever had.
If I have to go through the mayhem again, I'll be cribbing from guides like this, but I'll be really really angry about it.
How do normies live?