BEST replacement modem/router

[#1]

Hi fokes, I wanted to get others opinions of replacement modems/routers and find others experiences.

I see a lot of people have tried Billion, BT HUB 6, ASUS, Zyxel.. I would like to replace the sagem completely and spend a bit of money to get better. Has anyone some good suggestions? I have read through a lot of posts and they look out of date.

[#2]

@royleestoves - It depends on how deep your pockets are and what you want the router to do. I have a FireBrick FB2900, a DrayTek Vigor 2925 and two DrayTek Vigor 130 Modems.

[#3]

Hey mook..

I'ver decided to go fanless 24 port poe switch and a new modem. I will take a close look at those, thanks again.

[#4]

You'll get the info you need here;

https://www.draytek.co.uk/products/business/vigor-130

They're not cheapest modem on the market, but I think they are the best.

[#5]

Thanks Mook. Think I will give the 130 a go.

[#6]

@royleestoves you might want to wait and see what others suggest as you'll be lucky to see some change out of £90 for one of these.

[#7]

That ain't bad. As long as it's better and is reliable I'll be happy

[#8]

@royleestoves 

It really depends what you want from your replacement modem/router.

Also your budget.

What I considered "best", might not be what you need.

Generally the more capable devices need more configuration (at least to use the extra features).

Often what people really want is good WiFi coverage and there are products that provide better coverage than a typical "free" ISP router.

[#9]

What best means is a very variable issue.

Is it for example:

1. Best modem performance (this is probably dependant on matching the chipset with that in the fibre cabinet).

2. Number of wifi bands.

3. Wifi performance including MIMO 

4. Power consumption

5. Built in VOIP server.

6. IP telephone port

7. Number of USB ports and whether they are USB2 or 3

8. Value for money

9. Etc.

Currently the best for me is a Business Smarthub 6 because it has better performance than Plusnet's offerings, has decent wifi performance, allows me to select my own choice of DNS server, has reasonably low power consumption and most importantly cost me less than £20 off Ebay.

[#10]

Don't forget you might want one that plays nicely with IPTV, the Business Smarthub 6 ticks this box too.

[#11]

You've got you're own small office thing going on. I'm not going that far, but I appreciate the comments. I was hoping to make use of the free metal stuff and AP.. Also needing poe for home smart stuff for hikvision and of course poe AP, but I'd be happy with a better range and quality modem with gigabyte switch ports as a minimum. I'd love a 24 port layer 3 switch that would take a vdsl module that would work with PN.. But I might be asking too much.

[#12]

Hmm, I looked in to the hub 6 (think the home version) however I read of unreliability issues. Maybe the business edition is a different and improved model and reliable!?

[#13]

I’ll stand corrected on this, as I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure with a modem such as the DrayTek 130 you can connect it directly to a switch as the login details are put in to the modem so I see no reason why not.

So you may want to have a look at these.

[#14]

Hi @royleestoves, thanks for your post.

Whilst I can't directly support this query, I note there are some great options listed all round.

Please let us all know which you go for and how you get on with it! (I'm curious, is all!)

[#15]

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@royleestoves wrote:
Hmm, I looked in to the hub 6 (think the home version) however I read of unreliability issues. Maybe the business edition is a different and improved model and reliable!?

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You need to look at the date of Smarthub poor reliabilty issues reports. There were issues with flaky firmware in the early days. All I can talk of is personal experience which I grant you only extends to one home and two business hubs. These have performed faultlessly for a few years. Despite being connected to Plusnet they still receive firmware updates from BT. 

One minor issue that irritates some people is that every two weeks on the dot they go through a soft reboot routine, which results in a lost connection for a couple of minutes. Mine does it at night and doesn't bother me.