wrt bufferbloat: my internet is too fast (150 mbps) for a cheap router to effectively manage the connection, meaning that unless i pay 250€ for a router, I will just slow down my Internet needlessly.
150 mbps can be managed easily by an Archer C7 or one of many other QCA ar71xx based routers, which can be picked up for under $50 nowadays.
The Netgear R7800, while a bit more expensive ($150), is still cheaper than the price you mention, and is very powerful and able to handle gigabit speeds easily.
have a look at ubiquiti routers: their edge router lite is capable of handling gbit, and can protect against buffer bloat at up to 100mbits/sec. the only doznside is that they are harder to manage than the average consumer router
The edgerouter lite is quite old at this point and if the purpose is to use QoS to manage buffer bloat then the EdgeRouter X which is only like $50 would be faster. The edgerouter lite is of limited use for new installations nowadays.
Edit2: Arrgh, and didn't read far enough on the thread before sticking my foot in it where you otherwise discuss the Mikrotiks.
(previously)
Going up to the question of Slovenia higher in the thread, there's a Slovenian vendor who has the "hAP ac" (dual band, gigabit, SFP, USB port) for 121 Euro (https://www.virtua-it.si/izdelek/mikrotik-routerboard-hap-ac...) along with other less-capable and cheaper models.
I have 150 Mbps and a sub $50 router (ac-68u commonly sold by t-mobile on clearance as tm-1900) does fine with sqm without any significant loss in speed. Note that this has no open wifi drivers. So you'll need a separate AP, or use a more blob friendly distribution like dd-wrt. Or use two of these, one with blobs as AP and one without blobs running openwrt. That was a great combination under $100.
To be honest, that router costs 28 000 RSD ( https://www.gigatron.rs/ruteri/asus_dualband_wirelessac1900_... ) which translates in EUR to 236 EUR, so your point is not valid for outside of the USA. To get a feel for a router that costs exactly €50, see TP-Link MR3420 V5. Also, the router you mentioned (ASUS RT-AC68U has a dual core 800 MHz Broadcom processor and 256 MB RAM and 128 MB Flash storage, while most routers at 50€ have a 400 MHz Ralink/Mediatek Processor (single core) with 32MB (at most 64 MB) RAM and 4 or 8 MB SPI memory. ) I'm glad you happen to live in a country where you can obtain such a router for so little, I am not so lucky, so I use my ISP provided one that barely manages that 150 Mbps (thankfully with a Gigabit port (yes single LAN port)).
Yes, this is the discounted price because the hardware is a bit old. However, I think there are some decent affordable routers around the world. More so if you are open to ordering from China. I haven't been following the ultra cheap space too much, but you should definitely check out the forums. There are also APU2 boards (https://www.pcengines.ch/) that may provide a good bang for the buck. There's also old x86 hardware if you don't care about power consumption.
The only thing I've found that is acceptable to me is this: https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 (or "RBD52G-5HacD2HnD-TC", ... damn, don't they love the long-ass names). 128 MB RAM, Qualcomm processor quad core at 700 MHz (but ARM! :) ) and 5 gigabit RJ45 ports + Dual Band WiFi and a USB port! Plus, even if I can't get OpenWrt to work on it (though I prefer it), I can find my way with Mikrotik's RouterOS. I actually recently setup a PTP link at 3 km with 2 SXTsq's. Though I expected 100 Mbps, it only ended up being 72 Mbps stable, more than that and there's problems with the connection. I liked the old SXT more, you could put OpenWRT on it, the new ones use weird flash memory which OpenWrt can't write to...
edit: forgot to mention, it's 60€ brand new from a friend who works at a WISP
The firmware for routers like this is stored on SPI flash memory, and the size of the SPI flash chip determines how easily you can fit third-party firmware like OpenWRT on the router and how many compromises are necessary to do so. It's soldered on so not really user replaceable.
I am sorry mate, but this is not true. I have a connection that is 220 down and 12 up and my C7[-v2 can run SQM and I can get 190 down and 11.5 up. Set your Queue setup script to piece_of_cake.qos:
