The router provided by my ISP years ago doesn’t seem to cope well with multiple devices and high loads (or being left on for a few hours)

Are all routers pretty much the same or is there a particular type/model I should be looking for?

Any recommendations?

Would prefer not to spend hundreds.

Thanks

If your provider is Virgin I have a ‘spare’ superhub they sent me if that would work for you. Seems to cope ok with a couple of phones and a laptop.

That’s kind, but not on virgin, its ye olde broadbrand through talk talk

I’d a netgear rangemax for years and it was superb. Replaced it with a >£100 Netgear dual band all singing and dancing fairly recently. Routinely drops the signal and has to be factory reset to fix it, port forwarding simply does not work, neither does ip assignment. Apparently Billion are good and Belkin are reliable.

The Asus DSL-N55U rates very highly in tests and is about £100. I installed one fairly recently and although not as intuitive as the Netgear it works well and I have hear no complaints!

Modern routers do not seem to include modems as well nowadays 😳

i’m not so sure at the Belkin recommendation., the one i used 18 months ago was a nightmare – totally unreliable and a bastard to set up.- worked on one pc but not another etc etc. Beating it to death with a hammer solved my stress problems

This is a cut n paste from an earlier post:

Whats your budget? You on cable or asdl?

Im no expert but our old O2 one died recently so I did some digging. Came across this and got one for about £90. There are different variants of the same thing for just router, asdl router, cable router but you should find them easy enough (they seem to vary from £50 – £90 depending):

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/wireless-routers/1285564/netgear-n600-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-adsl2-modem-router

Its range is at least twice of anything we had before, it’s dual band (for modern devices like an S3), its got 2 usb ports (for a printer and say a harddrive for backups / nas), guest networks, gigabit and usb3 (for faster backups), parental settings, …. and is a doddle to setup and use.

I’ll stand by it – if you’ve got 50 – 100 gbp to spend.You’ll need the asdl version.

Billion 7800N is the best I’ve used; rock solid – probably been switched on for 2 or 3 months and typically goes 2 weeks without dropping the connection.

As Ho hum says, if you want a modem router you need to look for one that says ‘modem router’ on the box, as there are a lot of non-modem routers these days.

I recently changed my 10year old linux f/w with this router from PCWorld:
Netgear N600 WNDR3400
http://support.netgear.com/product/WNDR3400v2

Its been very very good. Not had to do any reboots, no dropped connections (on Virgin). Lots of useful features. I have 3 wifi networks from it in the house, one standard 2.4Ghz(secured), one 5GGhz (secured), one guest (open to public), parental control, loads of stuff.

Very pleased with it for £50

Its DSL though, so if you are not Virgin, then I think the equivalent is DGND3700

Thanks everyone, lots to look through there.

Complain to your ISP, they may send you a new one for free.

OP as per @Dibbs first port of call is the ISP, you shouldn’t be having the problems you are.

I had a netgear router which ran no problem with 4-6 devices and was left on permanently, used to reset it (turn on/off !) perhaps once every few months although it probably didn’t need it.

One tip I would suggest is to place the router near your main machine (assuming its a desktop) and run that off an Ethernet cable. The router we got from BT is inferior in range and reliability, I took a lazy/cheap route and just bought one of those “extenders” which deliver the network through the house wiring – cost about £25

An alternative is to switch off the wifi on your existing router (so just use it to connect/transfer data to/from the interweb) and connect a good dual band access point. I’ve changed to an Apple Airport Extreme for this job and its the mutts nuts as it also acts as a NAS (just plug in multiple USB drives) and print server.