Ask HN: Decent Internet Router Recommendations?
I&#x27;m a long term openwrt user, finally even set up DAWN[1] to orchestrate multiple APs (sometimes a win, sometimes worse than manually picking among each AP &amp; each band (2.4&#x2F;5) having it&#x27;s own specific ssid&#x2F;name).<p>I really hate to say it, but even for the geeks, I&#x27;d generally recommend some kind of mesh product. A roommate installed a parallel Google mesh product &amp; it worked so well, had such great coverage. Google spent hella time making this product good, thanks in part to Google Fiber. There&#x27;s a great talk on their finding from Avery Penarunn back at the first netdevconf[2]. I&#x27;m sure many of the competing products are also very very capable. They have a level of reliable, just works intelligence, even over wifi mesh, that makes me envious.<p>There&#x27;s sadly little new news in the OpenWRT space. There&#x27;s some on-the-cusp work with some new Qualcomm chips that might start working in mere weeks or months. But we&#x27;ve been running the same wifi4 &amp; wifi5 hardware for half a decade now, basically, with no real options. The Netgear X4S R7800 is still the go-to openwrt router. MediaTek has some wifi6 capable routers[3] targeted to the low end, which are nice &amp; available &amp; cheap &amp; modern, which is great, but decidedly low end.<p>Mesh just makes sense. Most devices have terrible wifi performance. Making them chat across weak or noisy links will hurt everyone. For most users, mesh products are quite affordable &amp; imo a good improvement.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;berlin-open-wireless-lab&#x2F;DAWN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;berlin-open-wireless-lab&#x2F;DAWN</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yZcHbD84j5Y" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yZcHbD84j5Y</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openwrt.org&#x2F;toh&#x2F;views&#x2F;toh_available_16128_ax-wifi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openwrt.org&#x2F;toh&#x2F;views&#x2F;toh_available_16128_ax-wifi</a>