Help me upgrade from the **** stock router box thing.

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I don't know much about networking gear.

I am currently using the plusnet hub one which is garbage.

I am looking to upgrade as I will soon be living with 3 others (all with laptops and phones). I will also be switching to a faster ISP in a month or so (probably a 300/350Mbit package).

I would like to spend less than £100, but I don't know what I need. I think if I buy a router, I need a separate modem. I think that the VM default routers can do modem only whereas the plusnet one can't.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Define 'garbage' please. What's the problem you're having?

If it's crappy wifi then a new router likely isn't the best option.
It's crappy wifi, but when there is a lot of wifi things happening the wired experience suffers a lot too. Stood next to the thing, transferring files from my desktop PC on 5Ghz tops out around 20MB/s. Move about 4m away and you're lucky to get 10MB/s. If the 5Ghz will even connect.

It's also very feature light, I remember having a basic asus router that would show me the network throughput and lots of other cool info, as well as being able to setup a 3rd party DNS.

It's a basic thing and my needs have grown beyond it's capabilities.
 
Well if your WiFi is going to need expanded coverage and you've only got £100 then you're limited in choices. 5GHz doesn't travel great distances, especially through walls. If that 4m drop off is in another room that's not hugely surprising. 20MBps is 160Mbps which seems a tad slow but it does depend on your device and other variables. What speed do you get if you wire it in?

I think if you're going to have people move in and need improved coverage (as well as speed) then you're probably not going to solve that with a single replacement router as already mentioned.

For that budget I think I'd probably buy a Tenda 3 node mesh system, turn off the Wifi on your current router and then introduce the mesh to see if it improves. Buy it from somewhere easily returnable and it is low risk. It will then be transferable to your Virgin router or whichever ISP supplied router with whomever you go with. I've no personal experience but your budget will stretch to two Honor Router 3s which could do the same and experiences on here suggest they are very good indeed. If correct then it'll almost certainly be better than the Tenda I suspect which IME is "OK" for a regular household but maybe not for heavy users and gamers/streaming.

Another option, though dependent on layout of your house and construction materials, is you may find better performance by instead of mesh, letting a centrally placed Access Point somewhere on your landing ceiling handle WiFi duties. Same principle in that you stop your ISP router doing WiFi and let something else take care of it. This would need you to run an ethernet cable from your router to the placement location though. And a decent 4x4 access point like a Ubiquiti NanoHD is going to be 50% more than you want to spend. You do get pretty graphs with it though :)

Unless you want an improved experience solely in the room your router is in (or very close) then I don't think there's an all-in-one that's going to help. If I've made huge assumptions and it is only the room you're in you worry about WiFi then one Honor Router 3 and a modem will probably suffice. That's £20 for a BTOR modem off ebay and £50 I think for the router. May not have the graphs though.

Can you elaborate more on how the wired connection suffers when there's a lot of WiFi devices? Are we talking high latency or limited internet bandwidth available or something else? What speed is you current Plusnet connection rated for? Since you can get 160Mbps over WiFi, and assuming you are on FTTC, then I would I be right to also assume you have a need to transfer things around your network too (otherwise even with those poor WiFi speeds you're more than enough to saturate an FTTC connection and the problem isn't your WIFi or router - it's your internet connection speed and what you're asking it to do) ?
 
@BigT I feel a little bit bad cause you've obviously put some time and thought into possible solutions and I've failed to mention an important point.

I live in a small flat. It's literally impossible to be more than about 6m from the router, which I have centred in the hallway.
 
In which case I think I'd go for an Honor Router 3 and BTOR modem now and see how you get on. It's very capable by all accounts and well within budget. It'll work with Virgin (superhub in modem mode) if you switch and you can add a second as a repeater if it's lacking when your guests arrive.
 
Even if it’s impossible to be more than 6m from the WiFi source, you’d be surprised how badly a small building can damage a radio signal. Depending on the age of the building, it may have solid or plasterboard cavity walls. And every time the signal goes through each layer of the wall it degrades a bit more. So it’s not unusual to see people in very small buildings unable to get decent WiFi coverage.

+1 for the suggestion on the Honor Router 3 - it’s solid gear at a very attractive price. And if you need to extend the coverage you can buy more and mesh them.
 
I've found the key is to replace the router the broadband companies give you and buy your own kit. I'm with Plusnet, previously EE, and have the FTTC Fibre Max product. I have a Draytek Vigor 130 VDSL modem which comes preconfigured for Openreach products, and three Amplifi HD units which give me excellent WiFi around the house. One unit connects directly to the Vigor modem and does the PPoE authentication, the others are in mesh mode but with wired backhaul. This setup gives me rock solid broadband and WiFi everywhere in my house. According to the BT Wholesale Speed Test I am getting around 73Mbps download and 20.37Mbps upload at 11ms - the cabinet is at the end of my road.

Good luck if you're moving to Virgin Media! If so, the modem part of my advice above won't be worth doing for a short term project. My street is cabled for Virgin Media and it was a possibility for me. I asked around, including students at a school where I teach, and they all say VM is good, but it does drop out, sometimes for an hour or more. They seem to think it is normal to lose internet connectivity for periods of time, but having used an Openreach product for several years it just doesn't happen (for me, at least). Given that, there is no way I would consider VM.
 
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