[rajivr1612]

Team, I have a Hathway broadband connection at home and have been using their router (ZTE ZXHN F660). I am on a 150Mbps 1000GB plan. I would like buy and use my own router. Can you please suggest a suitable / better router within Rs.3000/- budget?. I stay in an average size 2BHK apartment and the router is placed in the living room. With the present router sometimes the speeds drop when browsing on mobile from bedroom.

[Traveler]

Originally Posted by rajivr1612

Team, I have a Hathway broadband connection at home and have been using their router (ZTE ZXHN F660). I am on a 150Mbps 1000GB plan. I would like buy and use my own router. Can you please suggest a suitable / better router within Rs.3000/- budget?. I stay in an average size 2BHK apartment and the router is placed in the living room. With the present router sometimes the speeds drop when browsing on mobile from bedroom.

TP-Link C6 is an excellent Wifi Router and is usually available for under Rs. 2500/-. You will need to check if it supports your Hathway connection. If you Hathway connection is delivered via ethernet then it should be fine otherwise if you have fibre connection terminating at the ZTE router directly, then you will need two devices. A fiber Modem and then the Wifi Router.

Earlier the broadband companies used to provide two seprate devices but off late they have a single device that takes a fiber input and doubles up as the wifi router too. Do check before buying.

[rajivr1612]

Originally Posted by Traveler

... if you have fibre connection terminating at the ZTE router directly, then you will need two devices. A fiber Modem and then the Wifi Router.

Earlier the broadband companies used to provide two seprate devices but off late they have a single device that takes a fiber input and doubles up as the wifi router too. Do check before buying.

Thanks Traveler.
Yes, in my case it's a fibre connection. Is there any model from TP-Link or any other brand which has the port to connect fibre cable so as to avoid buying a fibre modem separately?
If no, then which is a good fibre modem to buy?

[diyguy]

Originally Posted by rajivr1612

Is there any model from TP-Link or any other brand which has the port to connect fibre cable so as to avoid buying a fibre modem separately?

i recommend you supplement your current Hathway router with another one at the other side of your apartment where your signal is weak. You can use this router as an access point with its input via ethernet cable from the hathway one. I have four routers at the four corners of my duplex house to ensure good signal throughout. Two of these routers are 10+ years old N routers while other two are 5 and 1 year old. I get 60-80mbps over wifi typically and 100+ over ethernet. I have a 200mbps hathway connection.

[binand]

I have a 24+4 port D-Link manageable switch that I want to use. Has anyone tried anything comparable in which Airtel's FTTH can be plugged in directly? Which SFP have you used? If I can deploy this I can really free up power ports and space at my home "POP" corner.

Currently Airtel have their own box into which the fibre goes and out comes a normal Cat6 cable via its RJ45 port. With this switch I expect to retire that box, shift my router elsewhere etc.

[Traveler]

Originally Posted by rajivr1612

Thanks Traveler.
Yes, in my case it's a fibre connection. Is there any model from TP-Link or any other brand which has the port to connect fibre cable so as to avoid buying a fibre modem separately?
If no, then which is a good fibre modem to buy?

The easiest way would be to turn off the Wifi of the existing ZTE router, usually by logging into it and disabling the wifi, then use a cat 5 cable from ZTE to plug into the TP-Link Lan or Wan Port and configure the wifi on the TPLink router.

[Traveler]

Originally Posted by binand

I have a 24+4 port D-Link manageable switch that I want to use. Has anyone tried anything comparable in which Airtel's FTTH can be plugged in directly? Which SFP have you used? If I can deploy this I can really free up power ports and space at my home "POP" corner.

Currently Airtel have their own box into which the fibre goes and out comes a normal Cat6 cable via its RJ45 port. With this switch I expect to retire that box, shift my router elsewhere etc.

Switches don't usually have a pppoe client for dialing out to the upstream provider. Unless your DLink switch has this, you will need a pppoe client to connect to Airtel.

Pppoe client is usually found in routers.

[binand]

Originally Posted by Traveler

Switches don't usually have a pppoe client for dialing out to the upstream provider. Unless your DLink switch has this, you will need a pppoe client to connect to Airtel.

Pppoe client is usually found in routers.

The switch is only for switching. The PPPoE client will be on my home Linux server.

Basically my POP is at the moment overcrowded, with not enough power ports. Looking at ways of reducing the number of devices. If I can deploy this switch the Airtel dabba and one other box can go away.

[gischethans]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

I face frequent downtimes which is affecting my WFH. So I was contemplating to get a backup connection from a different ISP. Then, I thought it would be good if I need not have to switch to the backup ISP whenever the primary goes down. Then, I thought why not use both the ISP and let a device decide how to distribute the load.

I am late to answer this question but thought it could help someone else. While looking for routers that support SIM cards, I came across D-Link DWR-920V which comes with a Micro-SIM slot and it can switchover from LAN to Mobile network seamlessly. It can switch back to the wired connection once it is back up online. As per reviews on Amazon, it even supports VoLTE calls just like JioFi devices.

While having a backup wired connection is certainly good, depending on downtime one faces, opting for a cellular connection would be cost effective.

Product page

[Traveler]

Originally Posted by binand

The switch is only for switching. The PPPoE client will be on my home Linux server.

Basically my POP is at the moment overcrowded, with not enough power ports. Looking at ways of reducing the number of devices. If I can deploy this switch the Airtel dabba and one other box can go away.

Most broadband providers use GPON as the distribution technology. An Optical Line Tranmistter connects to the Optical Network Unit at the customer's end and converts the optical signal to ethernet. Switches don't support the OLT technology directly.

The SFP ports on the switch use ethernet over fiber and are not compatible with the GPON standards. They can be used to create uplinks to other switches. Hope that helps.

[Thad E Ginathom]

My Airtel speedtest result has shot up to nearly 40Mbps. We are still using an old ADSL/copper-wire modem. I guess they must have brought fibre to our street, but I didn't think this sort of speed was possible with copper and adsl over the final stretch?

[Amien]

Originally Posted by rajivr1612

I would like buy and use my own router. Can you please suggest a suitable / better router within Rs.3000/- budget?

Quoting a previous recommendation post:-

Originally Posted by Amien

ASUS RT-AC53

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

My Airtel speedtest result has shot up to nearly 40Mbps. We are still using an old ADSL/copper-wire modem. I guess they must have brought fibre to our street, but I didn't think this sort of speed was possible with copper and adsl over the final stretch?

If your modem supports ADSL2+/VDSL, you can get that much. I have an Airtel VDSL modem which consistently gives 50-55MBPS over copper. After a recent roadwork the cable got damaged and speed reduced along with drop outs frequently. After taking the service engineer to task, this is what I got:

[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

My Airtel speedtest result has shot up to nearly 40Mbps. We are still using an old ADSL/copper-wire modem. I guess they must have brought fibre to our street, but I didn't think this sort of speed was possible with copper and adsl over the final stretch?

Even 100Mbps is available on copper wire VDSL called Vfiber by Airtel. Many people have it. The only condition is that they need to be close to the Airtel lical DSL switch. If they are further away then they get barely 40 to 50Mbps. VDSL can even provide multi gigabit over copper with the right technology.

[atulsian]

Originally Posted by gischethans

I am late to answer this question but thought it could help someone else. While looking for routers that support SIM cards, I came across D-Link DWR-920V which comes with a Micro-SIM slot and it can switchover from LAN to Mobile network seamlessly. It can switch back to the wired connection once it is back up online. As per reviews on Amazon, it even supports VoLTE calls just like JioFi devices.

While having a backup wired connection is certainly good, depending on downtime one faces, opting for a cellular connection would be cost effective.

Product page

This option is feasible if you have good indoor 4g/LTE connectivity. However, it will not be cheaper when compared to a second Wired connection if the data usage is more (VOIP. WFH setup). My friend recently got this router for fail-safe and load balancing two WANs. Fail-safe works perfectly for him. The only issue is when the first goes down and second WAN goes up, he has to reconnect his work VPN sometimes.

https://www.amazon.in/TP-Link-TL-R47.../dp/B004UC9V8Q