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I need a router that can do more than just standard Virgin Media hub. It will be mainly used for SOHO so that some working from home (WFH) and evening gaming sessions can be run by children while we are still working. Also, since it will be used for my little office, remote access such as VPN should be supported (at least 1-2 tunnels). Broadband speeds of up to 1Gb expected, DDNS, VPN, usual firewall and NAT settings for Raspberry Pi projects such as a web server or smart home. Any wifi router recommendations are welcome. Please post your router model used, what is it used for so, and why this one so that will help me to choose the best model. Price can exceed £130 but the range is up to £400. Thanks!

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I have been very pleased with the MikroTik line of routers. I personally use a hAP ac router as my main gateway, with other MikroTik products in use as local nodes (I'm 90% hard wired). The learning curve is not trivial but there are some good free resources; check out the YouTube channel of TKSJa. RouterOS, the MikroTik software, is extremely powerful and configurable. It does have native support for VPN, although I haven't personally used it as of yet.

For your application (WiFi, home office) I would suggest an hAP ac like mine, or possibly an hAP ac³ LTE6 kit if you're able to use LTE. The former lists for $129 and the latter for $219; you can shave a bit off these prices if you shop around. The hAP ac has been very fast, dual-band, Gigabit Ethernet ports plus one SFP slot, supports multiple SSIDs and guest networks. Also, take a look at MOAB service (Mother Of All Blacklists); with thrice-daily updates it's the next best thing to a dedicated hardware firewall with an active update subscription.

Good luck!

Edit To Add: If you want more Ethernet ports, the ability to run "The Dude" (Mikrotik's network mapping tool), and just more power altogether take a look at their RB4011iGS+5HacQ2HnD-IN. That's every bit a commercial-grade router...and only $249!

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A little late but I have used the Unify Universal Security gateway. It is tiny and has all the features. Best of all, if you are using all Unify devices such as switches, WAPs, you can configure them all within one software.

The drawback is that if you turn on all the security features the throughput drops massively. So, I have recently upgraded to UDM-Pro Dream Machine, but its pricey.

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First rule of thumb: do not connect closed source routers to the open Internet. I won't even waste a word on using the insecure garbage firmware shipped by such mainstream manufacturers as D-Link, Linksys etc. But even for MikroTik as this reddit post notes

It doesn't scale well, is difficult to configure, troubleshoot, & manage, and doesn't perform well in dense or dirty RF environments.

So that's that.

I very strongly would recommend some OpenWRT router. GL.iNet and Banana Pi are the market leaders here, I personally run a GL.iNet router for some time now but as this OpenWRT forum post notes

First of all Sinovoip (BPI) works quite closely with MediaTek on the designs - in fact MediaTek sort of views BPI's boards as their demonstration platforms and gives them technical assistance. Since MediaTek pays an OpenWrt developer to work on WiFi drivers, this pays off for BPI. Also Dan Golle does a lot of work getting BPI stuff into OpenWrt.

BPI's boards get support in OpenWrt very quickly.

So probably right now the recommendation would be one of the BPI routers.

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