Best Wireless Router for Me?

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TrojanH

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Feb 16, 2014
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Hi,

I'm looking for a wireless router to help meet my needs... what I need is a router that is:


  • Capable of filtering out websites on multiple devices (e.g phones as well as PCs, so blocking facebook app aswell as the fb mobile links etc)
    Good signal strength
    Wireless isolation and control - don't want anyone else stealing my wifi

Don't really care about wifi speeds, as my internet is only 4mbps, 360kbps directly and if I can get 200kbps in one of the bed rooms then I'm happy

My budget is low but I hope that's ok seeing as I don't care about speed and signal strength doesn't have to be military strength lol.


My current modem and router is an ISP Skyrouter, the SR101 and I only want to upgrade for better filtering facilities and stronger wifi connection. In my bedroom I get one bar, however 2m away at my door I get 2-3bars and a good speed... so if an ISP router can do that then hopefully it wouldn't take too much grunt to provide a signal to surpass that.

My budget is of <£50 and I've been looking at the ASUS RT-N12 (£20).. it seems good, is capable of DD-WRT and is from a reputable brand.







Also wondering.... would it be better to plug it in at my modem router downstairs, or through my homeplugs, and then my pc's ethernet into the router (that is connected through homeplugs). And If I keep them both on to give me wireless can they both become one connection, so I dont have to connect to them seperately and they act on one SSID?

my PC will connect to the router, sky+hd box, iphone 5s, iphone 4s, ipad (some new gen), tablets, samsung galaxy s2, and other random stuff
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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It seems you have done your homework. If you are willing to deal with dd-wrt that is you most flexible option. Though many of the asus routers and tplink routers have very nice QoS/firewall filters.

You can use both but you will lose all the fancy traffic filtering. You do not really want to run multiple routers so you would have to set your new router to run as AP. Also if someone were to connect to the main router via wireless your other router would never see the traffic even if you were running them as both routers.

Since that is a DSL router you are either going to have to find a way to put it in bridge mode so it becomes only a modem or turn off the wireless. In either case you are going to have to plug your new router into the lan ports on that device. If you put it by the modem or at the end of the powerline is going to depends on where you need wireless coverage more.
 
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TrojanH

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Feb 16, 2014
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4,510
Hi,

OK, I intend to only use the wireless router, however if placed upstairs I am unsure if it will pick up signal downstairs, if it doesn't could I switch the channels on the SR101 to avoid interference?

I can turn off the modems wireless and make it modem only which is fine... would two different SSIDs on different channels fix the problem?
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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If you were to run both devices as wireless you always want to run them on different channels. You can use the same SSID or different ones there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

Still this defeats the whole reason you are looking for the new router. If a machine were to connect to the SR101 the traffic would pass directly to the internet you would have no way to filter it or control it.
 
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TrojanH

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Feb 16, 2014
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I see.

However how advanced is DD-WRT or Asus WRT for filtering keywords? It's just the current SR101 can block websites but can't block websites on the app.. e.g blocking fb still alows the FB app on the iphone.

And what is the wireless range on the asus router?
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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The range of the asus router many people say is better than the average router. It is very hard to say all router actually transmit at the maximum legal power so it must be something other than raw signal strength that they are saying is better.

Few if any routers filter urls. They block pretty much based on ip address and ports. They leave it up to you to figure out what ports and ip need to be applied. dd-wrt is your best bet for anything strange because it is a actual unix device and you can pretty much run any scripts you like until you run out of memory or cpu. It is not real hard to figure out what the app on the phone is using. You just block everything and try to run the ap. You will see log messages indicating the ip and ports that are being blocked.

The cheap way to do very advanced filter is with OPENDNS which many routers support but your skilled users that understand how DNS works can bypass this by changing their DNS or using the HOST table.

Most others filters require you to load filter lists. When you start looking at this you are going to be better off with a firewall. Something like pfsense running on a small PC is your best bet.
 
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TrojanH

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Feb 16, 2014
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Alright well thank you very much,

what would then be the best router/system to use to filter out facebook, and youtube sometimes, be able to easily turn it off and on and to have a decent wireless range; and monitoring other pcs/phones in particular?
 
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