Cheap router ideas

[nbkanvz]

Hey all, I am looking for suggestions for a cheap router. I have a friend who is having connection issues in a house he shares with a buck of people. It's a netgear router he is using now I think wndr3400. Currently they have 15 devices hooked up to it and it's stability is over the place.

His budget is tight atm. Any suggestions to help him out? All the stuff I googled is around $200-$300.

 

[twizzops]

Usually a good way to "stabilize" older routers it to install DD-WRT on them. I am not sure what hardware version he has, the WIKI below says currently only version 1 is supported.

Netgear WNDR3400 - DD-WRT Wiki

 

[SiegeTank]

Jeez, get the 15 people abusing this poor old router to chip in $20 apiece and you can buy a nice new router with ample power!

Seriously, that many people accessing through one router at the same time, especially if lots of them are streaming video and doing other demanding tasks, your biggest problem might be bandwidth rather than the router. Maybe better they all chip in $2 a month and you upgrade the Internet service.

Just my 2cp.

 

[dewey2461]

Currently they have 15 devices hooked up to it and it's stability is over the place.

You need to identify the real bottle neck.

If a large number of those are wireless devices, and any everyone is streaming then only thing you can do is get get repeaters, get folks to go wired, and check your modems bandwidth upstream.

Chances are fairly good that he needs to rent more bandwidth.

 

[darkonites]

https://www.pfsense.org/

 

[nbkanvz]

Thanks for the replies. I will try and help them sort out the real bottleneck.

 

[interstellarsurfer]

As a bonus, if you install DD-WRT, it has an optional bandwidth monitor built in. So, it may be able to help you troubleshoot the problem, if it doesn't cure it.

Setting up some basic QoS rules for the various devices/services you're using may make the problem liveable even if you're capping out the bandwidth. If money is your first constraint, and time not-so-much.

Especially worth looking at is P2P throttling -
https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Peer-to-Peer_%28P2P%29_Throttling Let's be real - someone is doing it, even if it's a neighbor who cracked your net. One careless torrent user can make your router run out of available connections, DOS'ing everyone on the net.