ADSL Router and NAS Options

Kiro-San · 21 Nov 2014 at 06:56

I'm moving soon and am currently waiting on my new ADSL connection to be provisioned. As such I'm in need of an ASDL router. I've been looking at things like the Asus AC2400, Linksys WRT1900AC, Linksys EA6900, Netgear R7000 but I'm having a hard time deciding.

I game online a lot, download large files (via BT), plan on streaming video over the network internally, would like to be able to access my LAN securely (remotely) and I'll have my PC, console, phone, Blu-Ray over the wireless.

Additionally to that I'd also like to be able to watch HD video files over the network on my TV, preferably from a NAS which would also act as a general backup device for my PC. The TV in question is a Sony KDL50W829BBU.

Max budget for the router is £200 and for the NAS I'd say £400-500 excluding the HDD's.

Thanks!

bledd · 21 Nov 2014 at 08:39

Router

DSL-N55U £90

or

DSL-AC68U £200
(get this if you think there'll be fibre in your area soon, as this has a built in fibre modem also)

---

NAS

Synology
DS414 £350
or
DS415Play £380

(Depending what you want)

Couple the NAS with Western Digital Red drives.

Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR) will let you buy one drive now, then simply add more drives in the future to expand the array. Does it without damaging data.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

Might as well go with 6tb drives.

bledd · 21 Nov 2014 at 08:42

^Before setting anything up on either of them, update them both to the latest firmware/OS

Kiro-San · 21 Nov 2014 at 09:24

Sadly fibre won't be coming to where I live for a long long time. I'll check the other out.

Cheers for the NAS reccomendation. Now you've said it I do remember reading about the Play and thinking, "that sounds like what I'd need". So thanks for the reminder! 6TB should be fine for now, I've only got about 3TB of data total on my computer and I need to decide what needs to be kept and what can go at this point anyway.

Kiro-San · 22 Nov 2014 at 06:01

So finally settled on the 415 Play. To start with I'll add 2 6TB Red drives and do RAID1 and probably add a third if/when I need to and migrate the array to RAID5. Thank god christmas is right around the corner!

lamboman · 22 Nov 2014 at 15:10

Will you require any transcoding? No idea how well the hardware acceleration works with the Synology boxes, however you can get an HP Microserver for similar cash that will be more powerful (and you could run any NAS distro you want on it, including Xpenology if desired). Occasionally you can find a killer deal on these too.

As for routers, I'd personally look at getting a cheap wired router for the modem and bridging that to an AC68U. Gives you the option to use aftermarket firmware (Merlin), which often offers better performance, more features and faster bug fixes than stock.

Kiro-San · 22 Nov 2014 at 17:13

Looking at some reviews the hardware transcoding works really well and there's a chance I'll need it. I see your point about getting a small server but honestly I just want something out of the box that'll work and do precisely what I want. Yes, I'm being lazy, but I've been building my own PC's for getting on 17 years!! Cheers for the suggestion though.

Yep I've looked at getting a standalone modem and then a straight router to attach to it. I'm leaning towards an all-in-one though just so I only have one box that I need to access for all things. Still the non-DSL variant of the Asus DSL router has got rave reviews....