Looking for a new router

After many years I am moving broadband provider from PlusNet FTTC to GiffGaff full fibre. This has become a necessity in part, due to PN not being able to provide full fibre in the area and I don't want to be locked into an FTTC technology for the next two years. PN say they will move me to OpenReach fibre when it becomes available, but they also said that 2 years ago. In the meantime, the checker status is "building within the next year" but that was supposed to have been the case when I renewed my contract the last time around with PN. Shortly after I renewed my contract, Virgina Media came offering their full fibre product, but I still had more than 18 months to run on my contract. Now, 17 months later, GiffGaff are able to offer the same, but with a monthly rolling contract and much cheaper than VM, yet using the same network infrastructure as VM.

This change of provider necessitates a new router. My existing Draytek Vigor 2860ac has been a great workhorse and has stood the test of time over several years moving from the original ADSL over copper to the FTTC provision during its lifetime. Yes, I could plug it into the new network using the Ethernet connection currently used for the FTTC connection, but this 11 year old router is not going to provide sufficient throughput to make the most of a 500mbit full fibre service. It also has an awful firewall interface which I have unfortunately ended up having to live with and will be glad to get rid of.

GiffGaff are supplying an Eero 6 Plus which I understand is owned by Amazon so no doubt it will be very tightly locked. It also has only two Ethernet ports but I will need four (printer, VOIP, RPi and Wifi Mesh). I am therefore looking for a new router with advanced capabilities including:

- suitable throughput for a 1Gb full-fibre network
- support for VOIP SIP passthrough
- decent SPI and rules based firewall
- support for dynamic DNS providers NoIP and FreeDNS
- DHCP server with static address assignment
- 5G network backup (using giffgaff SIM)

Wifi is not required, just 5G support if possible. I had initially looked at the Banana BPI-4 offering as it supports 5G with an additional card and OpenWRT, which would "fit in with" my Wifi mesh which consists of Zyxel hardware running OpenWRT. However, these boards have doubled in price over the last year and now cost a whopping £320 minimum for the bare board. A year ago they were around the £160-£180 mark. Some bundles come with the WiFi board which I don't really need, but they don't seem to come with a proper UK power supply which would be necessary. At that price and needing to purchase extras, it seems that I might as well look for something commercial possibly used equipment, but not sure what to look for, so I would like to ask for suggestions on what brands or models to consider?

I am dreading this, but from a quick Google it looks like I am going to have to spend upwards of £300 for something decent enough with 5G support anyway, so I am going to set my top limit at £450. That does seem rather high, but the equivalent Vigor to mine with 5G costs above £600 so I am hoping that I can find something a bit cheaper than that.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Firstly; If the only reason that the supplied router would not suit your needs is the fact that it has only two Ethernet ports then you could simply add more ethernet ports by using an unmanned switch.

Regarding routers: Personally I have not used Draytek routers because they are reported to have poor WIFI and a few years ago, having tried many makes of routers, I found that routers from Asus suit me form a single device viewpoint.

My present router is an Asus RT-AX88U Pro and it works great with 1Gbps broadband and it has great WIFI Speed and range.

It has the firewall settings that you referred to but I am less sure about its ability to provide the 5G Backup that you want since it does not have a built in 5G Sim Slot. - However, it is supposed to support 5G via its USB Port and in theory you should be able to use a USB Dongle, (or a tethered smart phone), plugged into the rear USB Port to provide that 5G backup.

My RT-AX88U Pro is now a few years old and the newer Asus RT-BE88U looks similar.

https://amzn.eu/d/00i5eCaL

https://dongknows.com/asus-rt-be88u-dual-band-wi-fi-...


Regards,
Fido

Thank you. I don't know about the newest Vigor ax router, but my ac one is long in the tooth which is why I upgraded the WiFi with separate Zyxel Multi M1 units that have WiFi6 ax support when I had the chance to buy them at a heavily discounted price. I then turned off the WiFi on the Vigor. The performance improvement was very much noticeable. That setup works fine for current FTTC speeds, but I don't think that the throughput of the Vigor is likely to keep up with full Fibre when routing between the WAN and Ethernet ports. It will undoubtedly still work, but after some 10 years its probably time to upgrade my router.

It did occur to me that some of the kit I have currently plugged into the Vigor might be plugged in elsewhere such as the WiFi unit next to the router which has 4 ports, or the switch I have in the office. I will need to give that some thought. Inside the router its all on a flat network, although the switch can do some clever stuff using VLANs.

From my research the Eero 6 Plus performance doesn't look that bad on paper so it may suffice for a while until I decide what to do.

I was looking at a UTX50 and RUTC50, but it seems they have had some problems and support from the vendor is non-existent apparently, so will probably have to give those a miss. But the same thing bothers me about the BPI-R4 from China. If anything goes wrong with the firmware install, there is no support from the Chinese vendors. Besides, the steep spiteful price increases do not sit well with me. We are not in the USA after all, just paying the price.

I don't need WiFi, so I did wonder whether there are other wired options without WiFi that might be worth looking at? Someone mentioned Microtic quite some time ago. I don't know much about them, but maybe time to have another look.

Edited by TruthDigital (Thu 23-Apr-26 17:16:30)

I agree with Fido, get a switch, they are cheap enough and try out the Eero, I doubt it will be3 locked any more than any other router via a ISP.

If you do want to get another router I have been using a TPlink Archer AX53 for around 4 years now, still works well. I have no reason to change it.

My only issue with the Eero would be it is amazon and this is from someone who has a house full of Echo units.