As it happens I redid all of my home network recently with new routers (the old ones were becoming flaky after several years of use).

I use OpenWRT on all my routers, so my main criteria included, apart from range and speed, OpenWRT compatibility and ease of updating the firmware.

I ended up choosing the WD MyNet N600HD; it's an older and discontinued model, but you can still find it on amazon.com. Has good wireless range, dual band, and you can also use it easily as wired router. I personally use one of them as my main router, and 2 others distributed strategically through the house as wireless repeaters.

I also use a few other small "travel" routers, also flashed with OpenWRT, as wireless clients to provide access to my home wifi to some devices I have that don't have built-in wifi. Those are some cheap Chinese WT3020 boxes; they're small and easy to conceal, and as wireless clients provide each 2 wired ports locally.

The Security Now podcast has been recommending the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X because each physical interface can be configured to be on a separate network.
For example, in this transcript -- https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-569.htm (search for ubiquiti )
It may require a firmware update.

You cannot beat a Mikrotik in flexibility and price. They also have config examples for most usecases online.
Cheapest ones are 5 ports 10/100. The hEX series is the ones you want. Above that you have the 10 port rb2011 with 5xGig + 5x10/100.

Ports can be separated at will, cut off at the switching or routing level.

Personally, I just use an old model of Raspberry Pi coupled with an old ethernet switch (not a hub ^^). It works nice and you can also put samba in order to have file transfert available. I didn't do what will follow, but I'm pretty sure it can work too : if you own a NAS, instead of having your old computer a direct access to it (meaning that it may not work properly ... if at least it works, it would make security flaws, etc), mount some of the directories on the raspberry pi and tell the raspberry pi to share that folder to the older computers. I might try this someday because 32GB of storage on the SD card isn't really enough considering that there are some CD images, hundreds of drivers, hdd backups ...

@ skitters - I'm a regular Security Now listener too.

+1 Mikrotik and Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. Both are great, inexpensive choices.

Personally, I use IPFire on a mini-itx Atom platform. Free (if you already have the hardware), and some pretty awesome features. For wifi, I use a Unifi Long Range access point.

clueless1 wrote:

+1 Mikrotik and Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. Both are great, inexpensive choices.

Seconded. I use a Microtik at home myself, and lots of EdgeRouters deployed at work. Both are good choices for home.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I am using a Netgear Nighthawk R7000. I was in a scramble to replace my router when my trusty WRT54G gave way almost a year ago. I have cat5e cables running through the walls in my house, so it was a nice upgrade to gigabit ethernet for 100 megabit. The R7000's firmware is loaded with poorly designed features and bugs that you really have to work around, especially with NT4 and W9x connected computers. I spent months testing the firmware hacks from Netgear's support with limited success. Once the warranty expires, I will flash it to one of those OpenWRT-type firmwares.