Originally Posted by
Dodge DeBoulet
Don't know why you have so much trouble with routers. I'm currently using Netgear WNDR3700, WNDR4500 and R9000 routers that have all been functioning flawlessly since new. I also have a Linksys EA8500 that has been trouble free. The R9000 is the workhorse, providing our primary internet gateway and hosting multiple dozens of devices and 3 HD/4K streams most evenings.
For a novice, there's nothing wrong with your setup...except with that many different devices, you're likely causing a ton of unnecessary noise. Instead of having 4 APs, you could probably just use two prosumer APs and get a better experience.
I have trouble with retail routers, for the reasons I mentioned. More specifically: Poor design, cheap under powered components, buggy firmware with little functionality, and slow updates to fix CVEs. We have 4 people in our house including two teenagers. Streaming/gaming is near constant. I work from home (even pre-CV19). We use a ton of data, over 50GB/day on average. We run multiple VPN connections, both in and out. We have a Gigabit fiber ISP connection, multiple APs with overlaid SSIDs and separate VLANs. Netgear and Linksys junk doesn't stand a chance in our house. Right now, I can pull 500Mbps up and down via wifi (with over 50 other devices connected to 2 APs) to my local speedtest server. Good luck with that on retail devices.
The only retail router/APs I would touch are those that will take a good opensource firmware, like dd-wrt, pfsense, etc. However, that doesn't fix the under powering issues, they still eventually burn up.