Spec me a router!

[Napaim]

I'm with virgin media and I'd basically like to get onto my own router, running Tomato or ddwrt or even openbsd!

What are my options? What am I looking for? There are no routers that work with both the virgin input and the BT hijacked one Sky offer are there? (in case I wish to change some day).

Thanks in advance!

 

[KIA]

Budget?

 

[joeyjojo]

What are my options? What am I looking for? There are no routers that work with both the virgin input and the BT hijacked one Sky offer are there? (in case I wish to change some day).

Assuming you're after a router/AP, that's the sensible thing to get, then use it with whatever hardware the ISP provides (in modem mode, preferably, otherwise just disable the WiFi for a similar effect).

 

[Avalon]

You have to use the SuperHub on Virgin, it's paired to your account and nothing you can currently do will alter that. Sky use MER but it's not true MER, you only need an old BTO HG612 or ECI modem and if your chosen router will run DDWRT it can easily be made to work with Sky's MER implementation. Once you accept that then you're looking at 'dumb' routers without a modem and with 3rd party firmware support.

Personally I find consumer grade wifi on routers tends to suck. With that in mind wifi was not a priority for me aas i'd be running some Ubiquiti AP's to take care of wifi. Like you I wanted 3rd party firmware support, I needed compatibility with Sky's MER implementation and personally I wanted a dual core ARM CPU over a MIPS as the market is shifting to ARM. Asus offered the AC68U and AC56U with the same CPU/RAM/ROM but the AC68U had better wifi and cost more, I went with the AC56U as the wifi was not going to get used on the router anyway.

If I switch ISP my old HG612 BTO fiber modem will do ADSL/ADSL2+ and VDSL or I can set the Super Hub to modem only mode, in effect it will work with any ISP.

 

[Andy_82]

You have to use the SuperHub on Virgin, it's paired to your account and nothing you can currently do will alter that. Sky use MER but it's not true MER, you only need an old BTO HG612 or ECI modem and if your chosen router will run DDWRT it can easily be made to work with Sky's MER implementation. Once you accept that then you're looking at 'dumb' routers without a modem and with 3rd party firmware support.

Personally I find consumer grade wifi on routers tends to suck. With that in mind wifi was not a priority for me aas i'd be running some Ubiquiti AP's to take care of wifi. Like you I wanted 3rd party firmware support, I needed compatibility with Sky's MER implementation and personally I wanted a dual core ARM CPU over a MIPS as the market is shifting to ARM. Asus offered the AC68U and AC56U with the same CPU/RAM/ROM but the AC68U had better wifi and cost more, I went with the AC56U as the wifi was not going to get used on the router anyway.

If I switch ISP my old HG612 BTO fiber modem will do ADSL/ADSL2+ and VDSL or I can set the Super Hub to modem only mode, in effect it will work with any ISP.

Don't forget you can put the super hub into modem mode and use any cable router with it (make sure it doesn't have a adsl/adsl2/vdsl modem built in).

If the op want's the option of third party firmware their are a good few options. Asus rt-ac56u and rt-ac68u will run dd-wrt, tomato and merlin's customised version of the stock asus firmware.

The netgear R7000 is also a good option (it used the same SoC as the rt-ac68u) and will run with both tomato and dd-wrt and possible merlins firmware).

There are also the newer range which have more than 1 5 GHz radio, such as the RT-ac3200, rt-ac5300 and the equivalents from netgear. all the asus routers will be supported by merlins firmware, and probably dd-wrt. tomato may take more time, but as their based on broadcom SoC's it's likely they will be supported in the future.