ASUS RT-N66U Router
My old router started acting up, so I splurged and bought something fancy: the ASUS RT-N66U. There is a newer version that costs a little more and is a little shinier, but I don’t have any devices that would see a benefit from the more expensive router.
Anyways, this router is pure awesomeness. First of all, it does 2.4GHz and 5GHz, which is great because it means I can still use the internet even when my 2.4GHz jamming baby monitor is turned on. Second, even when I’m stuck with 2.4GHz, this router works much better than any router I’ve used in the past. I get incredible range and haven’t had any interference issues (keep in mind I live in a city with piles of competing signals). It also has quality USB support, so I can have an external drive plugged into it that all my computers can access.
But the feature I like the most, by far, is the built-in VPN. Basically this lets me securely connect to my home network (and the drive connected to my router) from anywhere I have an internet connection. I probably could have set this up on my old router, but it was really fast and easy on this router. It was also really fast and easy to set up the connection using the built-in VPN capabilities of Windows and also on my Android phone. For my phone, I used AndSMB to access my hard drive once I was on the VPN.
Photo courtesy of intdev under the CC BY-ND 2.0 license.