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Low end Wifi Router Under 50$
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Low end Wifi Router Under 50$

noamannoaman Member
edited December 2017 in General

Hello

i have found a new product of a company called tenda

Tenda AC10 1200M

and Tenda AC6

Xioami wifi router is also my option :-)

i am basically looking for a gigabit wifi router with 2.4N 300M and minimum 5Ghz bandwidth and their are very few devices in my home that uses this network

if any one has suggestions please let me know

Devices at home

1.huawei honor y6 2

2.Samsung S6

3.Xiaomi Redmi Note4x

bunch of old phones 2.4ghz n and two laptops one with 5ghz support and one only with 2.4ghz

My previous system consists of tplink wrt 940 N

but its not 5ghz it doesn't has usb and it doesnt has gigabit support

«1

Comments

  • I moved from a WR-941ND (similar to your product) to an Archer C7, flashed LEDE, and love it.

    Thanked by 3rm_ netomx karjaj
  • I love my D-Link DIR-645. Got it on eBay for 15€

  • WNDR-3800. It's bulletproof under LEDE, uses an Atheros subsystem, and doesn't need any handholding. I think I paid $20 for my spare. The WNDR-4300 is also a possibility, but you usually end up wasting the NAND space (as unusual mapping will softbrick it).

    Thanked by 1Oflameo
  • mate, $50 could get you Netgear R6400, which is not so low end, on the contrary it is considered as a fairly good router, and I have two of them working well in my house, both of them had the merlin firmware installed

    Thanked by 1NanoG6
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited December 2017

    TP-Link hardware is solid, most models are supported with LEDE (but double-check on the website).

    LEDE is what you want to be using for a router, do not even consider just sticking with the manufacturer's default firmware, it sucks universally (perhaps even TP-Link's).

    Thanked by 3maverickp netomx karjaj
  • What is the least expensive hardware that handles PFSense? Amazon has some intel based routers bit over $115 (USD).
    I like the functionality to monitor traffic - that PFSense has. DD-WRT didnt seem to have it.. and I assume LEDE doesnt either (as it is based on dd-wrt)

  • mkshmksh Member
    edited December 2017

    Simens Futro S400 + Linksys wifi card. About $10 each.

  • aFriend said: I assume LEDE doesnt either (as it is based on dd-wrt)

    LEDE does rrdtool graphs.

    Thanked by 1aFriend
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran

    aFriend said: LEDE doesnt either (as it is based on dd-wrt)

    LEDE is based on OpenWRT, not dd-wrt.

    Thanked by 2netomx vimalware
  • karanchookaranchoo Member
    edited December 2017

    I have Tenda Ac9 , Ac6 and Xioami r3 , All 3 of them. All of them have very good range
    Xioami r3 does not have Gbit port even its written in its description somewhere.

    While tenda routers have much better firmware then tplinks or xioami ,but still they are not yet compatible with LEDE , there have been some work , but not usable .

    on a side note i found xiomi router making calls to api.miwifi.com and tenda making http calls to api.tenda.com or something like these addresses , so thats why not using them until there will be some working alternative firmware.

  • @hammad said:
    I have Tenda Ac9 , Ac6 and Xioami r3 , All 3 of them. All of them have very good range
    Xioami r3 does not have Gbit port even its written in its description somewhere.

    While tenda routers have much better firmware then tplinks or xioami ,but still they are not yet compatible with LEDE , there have been some work , but not usable .

    on a side note i found xiomi router making calls to api.miwifi.com and tenda making http calls to api.tenda.com or something like these addresses , so thats why not using them until there will be some working alternative firmware.

    could you be a little clear?

    ac6 has gigabit ports?

    i couldn't find this information on their site

  • I also recommend WNDR-3800. I have a bunch of those second hand.

  • There's a catch-22 when it comes to cheap routers.

    The manufacturer's firmware is universally bad, so you're going to want to replace it with LEDE, but if you use LEDE you'll lose the ability to route at more than a few hundred Mbps.

    This is because most routers still use the same weak MIPS processors they've been using for the past 15 years and rely on offloading traffic to proprietary hardware accelerators. LEDE doesn't support these so you'll have to rely on the weak CPU to do the work.

    If you can find one second-hand I'd recommend going with a TP-Link WDR4900. I used one for a few years with OpenWrt. It uses a PPC CPU rather than MIPS and should still be able to crush modern routers under $100 (especially if you're planning to use VPN as it has hardware crypto). Even then don't expect it to do more than ~450Mbps.

    Thanked by 2uptime wwabbit
  • @aFriend said:
    What is the least expensive hardware that handles PFSense? Amazon has some intel based routers bit over $115 (USD).

    I switched to PFsense on a cheap Qotom J1900 system last year. Works well but the J1900 isn't quite fast enough to reach 1Gbps on PFsense out of the box. The Qotom based on the 3215u should be able to do 1Gbps, and the one based on the i3-4005u definitely will be.

    Thanked by 1aFriend
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran

    If you want to route

    Middling said: more than a few hundred Mbps.

    then why the hell are you even looking at these silly little plastic boxes? Get a small x86 (64-bit) machine with PFsense or the like. Personally I just run plain Debian on my router. But LEDE for amd64 also looks to be an interesting option, possibly in a VM.

    But I suppose that's not a frequent problem to have.

    Thanked by 3WSS mksh netomx
  • What about the Mikrotik Routers ? Do they work well with LEDE ? Quite less options though with 'AC' 5Ghz

  • @rm_ said:
    then why the hell are you even looking at these silly little plastic boxes? Get a small x86 (64-bit) machine with PFsense or the like.

    I did. But the OP wants something under $50 with built-in dual-band Wifi, so I was just outlining the tradeoffs when it comes to off-the-shelf routers.

  • I was also looking for a cheap router for my 2º homelab and I just bought today an ASUS RT-N12 on Amazon for 24.95€. Its just 100Mbps LAN but I don not need more. My objective was to find a cheap router compatible with DD-WRT.

    Does anyone has a ASUS RT-N12? Experience using DD-WRT with this router?

  • There are plenty of cheap routers compatible with DD-WRT. Finding something that works with LEDE is a bit of a chore.

    @rm_ said:
    then why the hell are you even looking at these silly little plastic boxes? Get a small x86 (64-bit) machine with PFsense or the like. Personally I just run plain Debian on my router. But LEDE for amd64 also looks to be an interesting option, possibly in a VM.

    They've got virtio built in, so if you've got too much time on your hands you could always virtualize your router (which I think is a bad idea). Plenty of 2GB Atom smallboxes will be under $50; add an external Wifi bridge, and call it good.

  • E8500 from NewEgg. Not fifty bucks but worth every penny plus more.

  • Most of the routers every one suggests is overkill ...

    :-(

  • WSSWSS Member
    edited December 2017

    What's wrong with a WNDR3800? That's perfectly affordable and completely fits your request.

    Thanked by 1AuroraZ
  • mkshmksh Member
    edited December 2017

    @rm_ said:
    If you want to route

    Middling said: more than a few hundred Mbps.

    then why the hell are you even looking at these silly little plastic boxes? Get a small x86 (64-bit) machine with PFsense or the like. Personally I just run plain Debian on my router. But LEDE for amd64 also looks to be an interesting option, possibly in a VM.

    But I suppose that's not a frequent problem to have.

    small x86 = Futro S400 (aside from being 32bit)

    Thats basically my setup too. Just being Devuan instead of Debian. Even fits on the 256MB CF card that came with the Futro. Just gotta be a bit careful to mount /var/log and similar from tmpfs to avoid killing the flash storage.

    Edit: http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Futro/s400/index.shtml i just love those stupid little things. Thin clients taking generic expansion cards are rather rare and others usualy cost way more so it's my favorite even though PCI is a bit dated.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    I think the problem with your specs is the gigabit part

  • YmpkerYmpker Member
    edited December 2017

    Asus RT-AC53

  • if you can compromise on 100mbit ports you can Go for mikrotik hap ac lite , its well worth the money every thing mikrotik have to offer.

    @noaman said:
    Most of the routers every one suggests is overkill ...

    :-(

  • @hammad said:
    if you can compromise on 100mbit ports you can Go for mikrotik hap ac lite , its well worth the money every thing mikrotik have to offer.

    Yes I'm looking for a new router as well when I saw this thread... the HP AC lite is listed as LEDE compatible as well.

    Anyone hands-on with it using LEDE ?

  • @WSS said:
    What's wrong with a WNDR3800? That's perfectly affordable and completely fits your request.

    netgear routers are really overpriced in my country

  • It's a 6 year old piece of equipment. It shouldn't be that expensive now.

  • defaultdefault Veteran
    edited December 2017

    I use TP-Link WR-1043ND V4 and I am quite happy with it for my needs. It's under 50$ and you can flash it up with LEDE (but then speed will be reduced from 1Gbps in Hardware NAT, to at least 300Mbps).

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