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After a toddler related injury, my Belkin from 2010 or thereabouts appears to be on it's way out (thank god the spill only caught the router not the PC).   

It's been...well, 6 or 7 years since I looked at routers at all. I have an 1100 square foot home, but I'd like a network that can cover most of my backyard as well (it's about 75' long and like 30 or 40 wide IIRC).   Stability, speed and if possible durability are main concerns. I have a 35 meg down connection, would like my network to be able to take advantage of it.  Any suggestions?

How much do you want to spend? Ubiquiti's Edge Router X is a fantastic deal at $50. Pair with a UniFi AP AC-Lite for $80 and you got yourself enterprise WiFi for cheap. Highly recommended.

LASR wrote:

How much do you want to spend? Ubiquiti's Edge Router X is a fantastic deal at $50. Pair with a UniFi AP AC-Lite for $80 and you got yourself enterprise WiFi for cheap. Highly recommended.

Seconded, but only if you have networking expertise above layman level. I think Ubiquity'UIs, while well done, are intimidating in terms of options and settings. 

Edit: if your Belkin unit included a DSL modem you are going to add a third party modem to the Edgerouter or pick something else entirely. I'm an happy owner of an Asus AC68U

Hmm, I didn't have much trouble with my Router X - it wasn't "plug'n'play" but not exactly a chore to work with either.. but my access point from Zyxel, that was somewhat more complex.  (..hopefully the Ubiquiti access point is easier to work with.) Just my experience.

I should note that I've had excellent service from the Router.  The access point on the other hand has been considerably less spectacular, but then I've had that same problem with most wireless connections - and the "AC" band router's I've used (consumer-level) have had a definite "shelf-life" of about 3 years (at best) before progressing into heat-death from the wireless portion of the router.

I'm effecitvely a layman. I know enought o know how to follow directions for setting these up, but not too much more than that.  And it's hard to find decent reviews of routers, particularly stuff like the range on them! I was kinda surprised by that

LASR wrote:

How much do you want to spend? Ubiquiti's Edge Router X is a fantastic deal at $50. Pair with a UniFi AP AC-Lite for $80 and you got yourself enterprise WiFi for cheap. Highly recommended.

That's the exact setup I have in my house. Covers the whole house and the backyard on a .25 acre lot. THe nice thing is due to POE you can put the access point in a different place than he router. I have a 50' cat5e cable and while the router is in the library in the front corner of the house, the AP is on top of the bookcase in the eat-in, central in the house.

paulWTAMU wrote:

I'm effecitvely a layman. I know enough to know how to follow directions for setting these up, but not too much more than that.  

That's about all you need to know for a standard setup of the Edge Router X.  Its Debian-based OS (firmware) does need to be updated, then you use a Wizard for setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SianDqAQaR0

I'd definitely recommend Google Wifi for long term support (near-monthly automated updates to the platform) and range...it performs very well but I have a low end connection so I can't really make any statement off that.

I'm sure I can't say it's perfect for anyone who doesn't need a lot of LAN ports, but it is pretty close.

I'm using a Watchguard T 30-W UTM firewall for my router, and a Ubiquiti UAP-AC Pro for my access point.

I'm not going to recommend the Watchguard, not because it's not good, but because if you aren't a Watchguard certified tech, you'll pay business prices, making it cost-prohibitive.  So like others, I'm going to say a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter (X or Lite, depending on price range) should do the job nicely.  They're maybe a little less intuitive than say, an ASUS box, but they perform well, and if you like to know your networking, that's not a bad thing.

I honestly don't think setting up a Ubiquiti access point is that difficult, but you do need a system to run the controller software, and you should pick a system you plan to have up for awhile.  This may mean running it out of a virtual machine, but it could also mean a basic PC you have that does other tasks, that doesn't get fooled with much.  Migrating the controller software once you've set it up and used it to set up the access point is not that trivial, so as said, pick something you're going to stick with.  It can run Windows, Ubuntu, or Debian.

I recommend going one step above the UAP-AC Lite and going with the UAP-AC LR.  You get an extra spatial stream on the 802.11n side, which is nice if you have any 3x3 cards such as the Intel Ultimate-N 5300/6300 cards, raising potential throughput from 300Mbps to 450Mbps.  You also get a bit more signal strength, designed to attempt to bridge the gap even in the case of weaker wireless adapters.  The UAP-AC Pro adds to this by going 3x3 for 802.11ac as well, but less AC adapters are out there that use three spatial streams than N adapters, making it less useful for most.  However, the Pro can use standard PoE switches (the Lite and the LR require their own PoE injector, which is included).  I wanted standard PoE, but for the average home user, not a big deal.

but you do need a system to run the controller software, and you should pick a system you plan to have up for awhile.

That may be a problem; I have one desktop, and my wife has her laptop, but we don't have any other PC's at this time :/ 

paulWTAMU wrote:

That may be a problem; I have one desktop, and my wife has her laptop, but we don't have any other PC's at this time :/ 

That's not a big deal, you don't need to have the controller running for the AP to operate.  Only if you're running a captive portal, since the controller hosts it.  Just load the controller up in a Hyper-V or Virtualbox VM, and once it's configured you can shut the VM down.  If you don't want to use the space on your hard drive, you can just throw the virtual disk on an external or a NAS or something.

Ethyriel wrote:

paulWTAMU wrote:

That may be a problem; I have one desktop, and my wife has her laptop, but we don't have any other PC's at this time :/ 

That's not a big deal, you don't need to have the controller running for the AP to operate.  Only if you're running a captive portal, since the controller hosts it.  Just load the controller up in a Hyper-V or Virtualbox VM, and once it's configured you can shut the VM down.  If you don't want to use the space on your hard drive, you can just throw the virtual disk on an external or a NAS or something.

Yeah you don't need the controller at all for single network setup on the AP. You do it all through their app. The router is all done from a webpage like most routers, just with many more features than almost all of them. There's even a CLI for some of the more nuanced functions (I used this the other day to restart the DHCP service to kick out clients after I setup the 2 printers and AV receiver with assigned IP's)

LoneWolf15 wrote:

I recommend going one step above the UAP-AC Lite and going with the UAP-AC LR. 

I'll second this recommendation. In the past year, my wireless router died, and I put an old wrt54gl that was unused back into service as a router/firewall (and turned off its wireless), and bought a long-range Ubiquiti AC access point (UAP-AC-LR). I did not find configuring the Ubiquiti more difficult than configuring a wireless router. The UAP-AC-LR has given me good coverage, and I have recently started running the controller software as a Windows service to which I can connect from a Ubiquiti app on my phone. This gives me the ability to cut off access by the device, which is very useful for getting the children's attention when they are glued to their devices. (And the app can do many other things too.)
I think someone else already mentioned another good point that it is very nice having the WAP separate from the router. This allows you to place the WAP where it gives the best coverage instead of where the cable comes into the house.

I have just been looking into this! Handy thread to come by

Aether wrote:

I put an old wrt54gl that was unused back into service as a router/firewall (and turned off its wireless), and bought a long-range Ubiquiti AC access point (UAP-AC-LR).

Does the PoE injector work with the WRT? I assumed the router or whatever router/switch you wanted to use had to support PoE passthrough. I've been looking to setup my Trendnet the same way but couldn't figure out if the injector would work. If I can save myself $50 and just switch off the wireless on my current router that would be great.

PoE injector goes to the Unifi AP only, not to the router so you have router->PoE injector->Unifi AP