kaeigen wrote:Thanks for all of the suggestions, but when I said affordable I was hoping for something under $200, preferably even under $150. The speeds of about 300-400Mb that I get with my current router are ok with me, I just want the connection to be more reliable.
I don't know for sure that my current router is causing the problem, but it seems possible since all of the connections go off at once and Sonic support claims they don't see anything on their end.
I'd bet good money it's your C7. I've owned various consumer wifi routers over the years (Archer, Asus, and Netgear) and have used official and 3rd party firmware with almost all of them (often 3rd party was better, especially Merlin). They all went down occasionally though. You'd fret for a few minutes, go through the whole reboot your modem/router/computer cycle, and then be back up and running.
I switched to a Unifi router a few years ago and haven't looked back. I've never had it go down, ever, in several years. I had some problems with their APs cutting out, but then figured out it was a problem with radar and DFS channels in my neighborhood. They've been rock solid ever since I moved off of DFS channels. I know Unifi has it's issues, but it's been bombproof for me. We had three people working full-time from home during the pandemic and our network never went down. I couldn't have been happier with the investment in hardware and time to set everything up. Plenty of people swear by pfSense combined with APs from Aruba, Engenius, Ruckus, etc. (which can be found for reasonable prices on the used market). There's more of a learning curve with those solutions than your typical consumer routers, but you definitely get what you pay for. A little bit more money and time up front will save you lots of time and headache down the road.