I’ll preface by saying that money is an object. About $130 USD is what I’ll spend.
None of us are gamers.
Occasionally a family member needs to work from home, but speed isn’t critical for her.
We often have two TVs streaming, occasionally three TVs.
Our service is 100 mbps.
I’m a IPV subscriber for another 15 months.
For the past 5 years or so, we’ve very happy with our now old TP-link Deco w2400 mesh system…but it doesn’t have a way to either add a VPN with its stock firmware nor a way of flashing it with dd-wrt that I could find.
The cheapest & easy option would be to buy a newer Deco unit which would take about 5 minutes to integrate that into the present set up…but the only protocol option with that would be OpenVPN.
Another option I’m considering is getting a refurbed Asus a couple of range extenders. Many Asus allow using WireGuard, either through the official Asuswrt firmware or the semi-official Asuswrt Merlon flashing.
The third option is to buy something from Flashrouter.
Opinions?
(Yes Miki, I did a search, but all the posts are kinda obsolete, lol)
You’re all good @elginherd I know you put the effort in. I’m going to watch this thread as I’m curious what options the Insider gang comes up with for ya.
My setup is not within your price range so I can’t comment on how well a cheaper router will do. I got my router during a black Friday sale. The model I have is $449 now . My opinion is wire guard is a must. The speed difference is insane, and if your going to run everything over VPN you may need that speed.
I would highly recommend going mesh over range extenders. A hard-wired backhaul mesh, even just two nodes would be a great choice IMO. Cordless backhaul still good in the mesh system, but I hard-wire wherever I can as it is more dependable.
I agree with the mesh in our limited experience.
We’ve had good performance out of our Tp-link Deco w2400 system since I bought it about 5 years ago. The problem is that, while it’s easy to include a newer model, as far as I can find none of the Deco models support Wireguard.
I haven’t looked into configuring my main mesh unit as an access point yet.
Not sure about the deco but the TP-link model I linked to you can add the VPN client you want and use Wireguard as shown in the tutorial I also linked to. I’ll do some digging.
I have the Asus Zen Wifi mesh units, two nodes…AX6600. I think this one supports Wireguard, although I don’t have the VPN directly onto mine. I know this model is a little more money than you are looking to spend, but the price on it is coming down now.
Here is their answer.
TP-Link VPN routers and Deco devices support multiple VPN protocols, including: PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN, and WireGuard, with varying compatibility depending on model.
. My opinion is wire guard is a must. The speed difference is insane, and if your going to run everything over VPN you may need that speed.