OpenWrt is a great router firmware with lots of features, flexibility and security updates. It is basically a small Linux distribution and does a smart job at adding enhancements to any “supported” router. One can read more about it here.

I have been using Google Wifi for a while now and it has been a great experience. It has an amazing HW (4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM). Google SW can be controlled using Google Home but privacy, DNS, parental controls, firewall, ad-blocking and other features are either not supported or are not as good as I would like them to be. And also my version of the Wifi AC-1304 does not receive any new features.

About a couple of months ago, I went from OpenWRT to Gargoyle on my Netgear R6220 router. You can read more about it here. I had setup a couple of networks with one hidden and not isolating clients whereas the other one doing the reverse. Now everything was OK but the Gargoyle used to crash my kernel whenever a new device tried to join the unadvertised network. The different interfaces were also brought down. Again, there are certain features of OpenWRT that I really missed with one being the ability to create multiple virtual radio interfaces and the other being the flexibility with adblock host lists.

I recently got a Netgear R6220 router, an AC1200 dual-band router with very impressive specs. It was awarded the best router in 2016 and now in 2019, I still think it is a very good router. It has a 2 core Mediatek MT7621 (MIPS) processor with 128 MB RAM & 128 MB ROM i.e. ample space with some good processing power. Below you can see the impressive specs. BTW: I got this for almost 15 USD which was a steal!