Feeling lost, Dont know which router to buy

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

First let me apologise, I have read through lots of threads, To be honest, I dont want to buy another router that really wont live up to what i want.

Currently I use and have been very happy with an Asus RT-86U, It currently has Asus Merlin on it, But, I think its only a matter of time before it reaches its end of life.

So I read on the internet Asus RT-88u is supported on Openwrt, So I brought one, Only to find out its not the best, The latest Snapshots dont boot, the One that does boot, Has problems with Wifi. So I flasshed it with ddwrt and its last build was back in 2020.

I want something as powerful as the RT-88u, So that i can run wireguard on it, I guess, I want something like RT-88u.

This post sounded better in my head, Not sure if I explained well enough.

Many thanks for at least reading.

2

Pick one from Broke uni student looking for a hackable "pirate wifi" setup - #4 by frollic

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3

I used to use an RT-AC86U with Merlin. I replaced it with an $80 Dynalink DL-WRX36. Better than I would have imagined.

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4

I have WRX36s too, but as APs, rock solid.

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5

I have to say a real big thank you to you all, This is the advice I have been searching for, You guys are going to save me from making a purchase that would have been totally wrong.

6

You also have the option of getting a wired-only router (e.g. x86 box or Pi-like SBC) and reuse the Asus as an AP behind a modern router. I used a Raspberry Pi 4 with the Asus (on stock FW) as an AP for a while before buying the Dynalink.

I might go back to the Pi and configure the Dynalink as an AP, just for something to muck with.

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7

The Linksys E8450/ Belkin RT3200 are such good suggestions; however, here in Europe they are very hard to come by, even on Ebay. They sell them for about £150 second hand on Ebay in Europe when I paid £75 for it.

8

Taking the going price for an rt-ac88u as a basic price range, https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commitdiff;h=e7c399bee677e9bac66e1bea697aefb8d828edfe might be worth looking at - if you'd be comfortable flashing via serial2usb. rt3200/ dl-wrx36 are also good options, neither trivial to flash, but those at least don't require serial console access to flash.

9

While not answering your question about hardware selecction (you've already gotten great answers on that part)... I just want to comment here...

snapshots may introduce new issues/bugs relative to stable releases.

Generally speaking, OpenWrt has a good track record for functional stable releases and even snapshots, but snapshots are daily builds that can result in unexpected bugs. Keep that in mind for your hardware selectoin -- it is usually best to go with something that is supported on a stable release build. Newer/bleeding edge devices will typically only be supported by snapshot until the next major stable release series is forked. So consider what is supported by 22.03 or 23.05.0-RCx unless you are tolerant of potential issues around snapshots.