I am dithering on which model of Netgear router to buy, would you care to give me the benefit of your experience and accept my envy over your internet connection and suggest a model. I have similar list of boxes with 3 NAS to boot.
Many thanks.
Mark
Well, it’s been a few years since I shopped around but I would not buy a Netgear product or any other mainstream consumer network gear as it and many others are so ubiquitous and cranked out so carelessly they are the targets of innumerable attacks.
I have a cyber-ancient Engenius WiFi router. They’ve gotten away from their broad range of end-user routers and seems like this is the only “non-commercial” one they make now:
You can search Amazon or New Egg for earlier ones. The round ones are the later models. Any “squared-off” ones are even earlier, which is not to say they wouldn’t work for you.
If my Engenius smoked today, I’d shop Ubiquiti, Zyxel and SonicWall.
Otherwise, you’re on your own. Good luck.
As for my network connection, earlier this month dropped to 30 Mbps after two years of 100. My logs noted I rarely hit a consistent 100 as just about everything serves out these days is metered and I wanted to save the $20/mo. 30 is more than adequate for webbuhnettzing and streaming as I finally cut the cord and now getting fuboTV, HBO and Prime on a Roku Ultra and local OTA, of course. Saving over $100/mo.
We use 2 of, and like, the Netgear R7000.
Thanks for the info.
I have a Netgear R6400 AC1750 Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router that I bought from Best Buy 7 months ago. This router is 802.11ac-capable with gigabit Ethernet ports. I tried an ASUS AC3100, but after bricking two during the initial firmware upgrade and then having the tech support representative tell me to never use the latest firmware (???), I bought the Netgear. Couldn’t be happier! Signal strength is also better than the ASUS, and covers my whole house.
Technology changes very quickly in routers nowadays, but hardly anyone actually needs the latest-and-greatest. I’d normally target at least an 802.11n router, but you mentioned NAS, which makes it sound like you do large device-to-device file transfers. However, even an 802.11n router will exceed most home Internet connections many times over. Simultaneous 2.4 & 5GHz Dual Band WiFi and gigabit hard-wired ports are preferred IMO, but not normally required. In your case you may want the gigabit ports. FYI, Wyze cams operate on 2.4 GHz 802.11n, available in most any router.
Obviously, environments vary. As far as the environment my router operates in, I do large in-home device-to-device transfers, have gigabit Ethernet, several 802.11ac and 802.11n devices, and my Internet connection is 70Mbps down, 6Mbps up. Except for my large device-to-device transfers an 802.11n router would cover this fine. Only an 802.11g and below would be slower than my Internet (and I don’t think those are sold anymore).
As far as 802.11n routers, my sister didn’t need or want an AC router like I bought, so I bought her the much simpler but still fully-capable Netgear WNDR3400 N600 Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router. Compared to mine it was half the cost, 100Mbit wired, and no 802.11ac, but still far faster than either of our Internet connections.
Thanks for posting up your experience, computer251a. Good info there. And yeah, gigabit Ethernet for NAS devices on the LAN is the only way to go. And I went with the Roku Ultra for its 10/100 (more than enough) Ethernet as I didn’t want to trust my critical entertainment needs to WiFi. I mean, Game of Thrones is two weeks away! 
It’s pretty much Best Practice to not upgrade firmware unless instructed to do so by support personnel to resolve a known issue. Manufacturers generally post this kind of warning/disclaimer on the download site.
As well, if notified by email (considering you’re a registered customer or-opt in to a public subscription), usually to fix security or performance issues - rarely for feature enhancements. And for security vulnerabilities, by public announcement via news and social media, blogs, etc.
Bricking a router by a firmware update is up there with bricking a smart phone in an attempt to root it. PC BIOS upgrades are no one’s favs either.
But I think IoT devices will soon top 'em all. I had the problem with Wyze’s last firmware update.
I got my Roku Ultra on March 6. During initial setup, it announced a firmware upgrade and the only option was to continue. It stalled at 80% and the router RJ-45 activity LED went solid . Checking the router traffic, there were no longer any requests from the Roku. About ten minutes had passed so I unplugged it, waited a minute and plugged it back in. It booted to the main screen, connected, streams OK and no issues since then. This for Step One in my cut-the-cord project! What fun.
Thank you Wayne. Valuable insight.