What wireless router should I buy?
I'm in the market for a new wireless router, but all those acronyms scare me a little. =/ Up until now, I had been using my MacBook Pro to create a Wi-Fi network by sharing my ethernet connection, but that has become too cumbersome to keep doing. I've read a few guides on buying routers, but none of them are bold enough to recommend specific hardware instead of just general technologies. I have a good feel of what I want it to be able to do, so that should help decide which is best.
• it needs to handle reasonable internet speeds: we get a steady 10-15 Mbps from our ISP and might upgrade sometime in the future. It doesn't need to be blistering fast, but it should at least handle HD streaming without hiccups.
• it needs to be able to handle several devices all at once. My parents both have an iPhone and an iPad each (yes, we have too many iProducts in one household), and we have about 4 more laptops that'll be connected as well. It's unlikely we'll all be using the internet intensively at the same time, but it would be nice if the router at least could handle 5-10 devices simultaneously without randomly dropping the connection from time to time.
• it needs a pretty good range. Our house is slightly large, with thick floors and walls. It should manage maximum output within a three floor range and up to around a 10-155m radius, and something more reasonable up to a 30-400m radius. We live in the city, but it's not too crowded with wireless networks (about 10 are reachable at any given point in space), so interference shouldn't be a huge issue.
• I'd like to have it connect to our wireless printer (being able to set up Google Cloud print would be really cool) and an external hard drive as well for hosting and sharing files between devices.
• lastly, I'd like to have the option of tinkering it and installing something like OpenWrt [https://openwrt.org/] on it.
I'm not sure how much something like this would cost. I'm fairly certain that $40 might not cut it, and I guess I can afford something up to a hundred and something (say, $150).
I think this is the best for you. Wireless routers typically advertise their speed in megabits per second (Mbps). Older Wi-Fi models offered 11 Mbps, mid-range 802.11g routers 54 Mbps and the latest 802.11n routers claim up to 450 Mbps. You may be tempted to only look at those routers with the highest Mbps rating.
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