I’m shopping for a new router and I would prefer something from a company that isn’t stealing my data and spying on me at every opportunity.
I live in a small house, 1100ish square feet. I have 8 wifi cameras, 6 computers (two are for work), a handful of phones and tablets, nearly 50 lights and other smart devices, and lastly I have 10 Sonos wifi speakers. I would also strongly prefer something that is wall or ceiling mountable.
My current router is buckling and can’t handle the load. I would very much appreciate any advice or recommendations you can offer me while I’m shopping!
Just an option to consider, not really related to load: there are some wired-only routers out there that are sometimes a bit cheaper (and the actual network router part of a router/wi-fi setup doesn’t need to be very fancy). Then you can buy a separate wireless access point (AP). Usually that means the AP is more expensive, but you can buy Wi-Fi “range extenders” that can act as an access point and are cheap. Although you’d want to confirm that it can act as an AP. That allows you to divorce upgrading wifi from upgrading the router. Might even consider using your current router, with the wifi disabled, with the AP plugged into it. Although a lot of APs use power over ethernet (PoE), so that could make it slightly more complex and costly.
If devices are spread out, you can do mesh wifi where there are multiple wifi access points. But I assume that probably wouldn’t help with interference (make it worse since it’s just more wi-fi devices communicating). You might just have too many devices causing interference. I guess you would want an access point that at least has whatever the fanciest modulation is, like “MU-MIMO” or whatever. I guess an AP/router with 4+ antennas would be better?
Like here’s an AP: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Wireless-Beamforming-Multi-SSID-TL-WA1201/dp/B0CNSCVXZN
It’s Wi-Fi 6, so it does not support the 6 GHz band (Wi-Fi 6e) which is fine, not sure if you have any 6 GHz capable devices. Looks like it also comes with a PoE injector.
with a router like https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Balancing-Bandwidth-Management-Monitoring/dp/B0D934MCV4