Home networks are a chore to maintain and deal with. No one wants to deal with it because it's fiddly, technical and stuff that should just work, like turning a tap on for water. However, it appears that in a bit over 6 years, my third router is dying or close to dying.
Routers seem pretty fragile and of varying reliability. I had a look at a couple of major brands (TP Link, Linksys, Netgear and D-Link) on newegg, and all their 1-2 star reviews had similar complaints - hardware faults in purchase or eventually becoming faulty.
They all charge a similar type of pricing structure with products that range from simple 150M wireless, up to 300, 450 and 450 dual band. They also tend to have more atennae as you move up the price curve along with a bonus USB port to plug in storage devices. Gigabit wired networks are also present in the mid to higher range products. Some brands like TP Link are clearly no frills type discounts.
My thought on buying this stuff is simple. Reliability seems questionable. Higher end products are clearly significantly higher margin (extra $20-40 for a USB port and antenna? Seriously? Literally costs maybe $2-3 at a generous guess). So buy the lowest profit margin product that you can accept. If you don't care for Gigabit network, don't get it. If you don't care about 450M dual band wireless, don't get it. Unless you work on digital media and need to copy loads of stuff all the time, why would you need it at this point in time - remember, the router will probably die in two years and you'll be buying a new one anyway.
This is annoying and affecting my gaming!
