Broadband Router Comparisons

Thu Dec 24 15:05:21 UTC 2015

I have reasonable success with simply lending the customer a router. In
most cases they will then buy it afterwards, because it turns out that
their old router was indeed bad.

But you can not win them all. Sometimes it is the other equipment that is
bad, or the customer is clueless. They might even be lying because everyone
knows you have to pretend it is worse than it actually is to get the doctor
to take you seriously. Also who here can honestly say you never pretended
to power cycle your Windows 95 when asked by the support bot on the phone,
while actually running Linux, because that is the only way to get passed on
to second tier support?

Just last week I had a customer complaining his router was bad. I went out
there and found it in the basement, on the floor, under a bed with a ton of
crap on top. He said it was so much worse than his old internet, where he
had the router in the center of the house in his living room. Not too
surprisingly? He claimed the routers were located the same place until I
turned up at his house and asked to see it...

I do not think you will have much success at pointing to a list of
supposedly bad routers. The world is just too complex. A bad experience can
be due to anything really. Most likely they are on 2,4 GHz and the spectrum
is crowded. Combine with an old computer (or even brand new!) that has crap
2,4 GHz wifi - nothing a router can do about that. I demonstrate that it
can work with my own computer and then advise the customer on what to buy.

Regards,

Baldur