I'm going to get me a new Router, and I thought it would be a good idea to ask the gathered collective brain-pool here at MZ about suggestions regarding current brands and models!

I know many of you knows about this stuff!

What I'm looking for:

Wired Gigabit WAN and LAN (min 3 LAN ports) is a requirement.
WiFi appreciated, technically not a must, latest standards.
Acknowledged High Security (with firewall, blacklist, whitelist, etc)
Acknowledged High Network Performance (lots of traffic between many internal and external sources)
Flexible interface with usable and powerful controls for configuration.

On Power-UP: An optional ability to automatically establish *and keep alive* an outgoing VPN connection to services as IPredator or such, and route all traffic through that, would be a plus, but not a requirement.

Some routers can be flashed and customized I have heard. Anyone with experience in this? What to choose there?

So, any recommendations about the early 2018 router options?

Thanks in advance...

I look for something that has gigabit wireless and wired and also has the ability to have its software replaced by ddwrt. I dont look for huge security features like a firewall/vpn services etc.. I run pfSense on a seperate 1U server and my router is hooked up to that. psSense provides the vpn/firewall etc services that I need and then some.

I have a TP-Link TL-WDR4300 v1 (you can pick these up at less than €20 used) with LEDE. I have multi-wan set up, and ad-blocking (which means that phone apps won't download any ads, as the router does not resolve the adservers ip).

It might be a bit tricky to set everything up with LEDE/OpenWRT, but you can really have yourself a decent router for a fraction of the price a high-end one.

I second TheMagicM. Router manufacturers often abandon their products even if a serious bug or exploit (i.e. KRACK) comes along. You may not plan on ever using ddwrt/openwrt, but it's nice having it there if you need it.

Quote:
I am using anavm frizbox 7490 since two years. Fritzboxen are rather popular in Germany,but not so elsewhere. It's fast, reliable, gets frequent os updates has quite many features and the configuration Interface is fully Odyssey compatible. The Fritzboxes are not the cheapest though, but worth the price.

Yep, I can recommend Fritzboxes and Zyxel.
My Fritzbox is now more than 6 years old and still works well and gets updates.


Manfred

The 'best' router hmm, it depends on it's usage. For you, maybe I could suggest Lancom from Germany.

Pros:
- Many features and actual standards are supported, but not all.
- If a feature is supported, it is supported to detail. Nothing is left out.
- Enormous performance. (e.g. for my almost two year old router: VPN+AES 330 MBit/s, HW-FW + HW-NAT 930 MBit/s)
- Quality hardware with own high-security OS. Recent releases, betas and immediate reaction on vulnerabilities. (of course no custom firmware possible)
- Excellent support. A problematic router of mine was replaced by a brand new one within two days.

Cons:
- Hard to config for a network newbie. SNMP3 config- and monitoring-tools are only available for Windows. On other platforms, one have to use the web-interface or a shell for manual setup, which is quiet painful. But of course auto-config via e.g. RADIUS is also supported.
- A little, ahm. very expensive. But features, performance and support justify the price.
- Some models does have a fan, which could be noisy if nearby.

LC is not for a normal user, who doesn't want to go into details and also not for big companies. LC is for network nerds (I'm not a nerd :), which like to play with in deep features and don't get mad, if a new beta-version they just tried, broke something else.