Now a days, a lot of internet service providers either give away free routers (or charge a monthly rental) or their modem itself has router capabilities.
These modem/routers typically have a very small WiFi range. If you are taking a new connection, ask your internet provider if they are charging for the router they providing. The rental could be part of your billing cycle. In that case, ask them to give you a basic modem (which should come free) & you should be able to get a budget router which would typically cost you less than what you are being charged for by the internet provider.
Typically, cost of a router is determined by two factors - the range of the WiFi & how many devices can simulataneously connect to it. Everything else is pretty much a jazz. Next time, you buy a router, just look for these two factors in it.
The router that we are going to recommend is a budget router & provide decent coverage in a 1000 sq ft house. If you are looking for expensive router which could provide a really long range & support lot more devices connecting, go here
TP Link TL-WR740N
You would find this router recommended at a lot of places, typically because it is available at sub Rs 1000 price & provide as good coverage & connections as many of Linksys, Dlink & Asus routers that typically cost upwards of Rs 2000.
There is an aspect to it which very few people know of. The router supports Openwrt which is like Linux for Routers. It does not come pre-installed with Openwrt, but you can port Openwrt to it. That link might look daunting for first timers, but the process happens smoothly.
Why Openwrt
Why would you want Openwrt on your router ? Typically because its the best router OS out there. Apart from giving you a lot of freedom, a cool feature is, it lets you create an open guest network through which you could share your WiFi with neighbours. An extensive list of features are on this makeuseof article
Now sharing WiFi has its own challenges
- What if somebody starts hogging my bandwidth
- What if people end up using all my data
- Why the heck will I share my WiFi with others ?
Introducing Griggi built on top of Openwrt
That is the reason we have built Griggi. It lets you share your Wifi with people around for a price & it makes sure that others dont abuse it. Consider it Uber for Wifi idea.
The salient features of Griggi is :-
- You specify how much data per billing cycle you want to share. Wifi sharing disables automatically once the limit is hit.
- Griggi ensures that you always get better speed than others on your network.
- Others looking to connect to your Wifi can do so seamlessly, without you needing to reveal your password. You accumulate Karma GBs when they use your connection, which you can eventually use with others Griggi WiFi when you go out. You could even sell those Karma GBs to us & get money for it.
Know more about Griggi on our home page.
Get free internet with Griggi
Consider this scenario. You have 100 GB data for monthly usage in which you use only 60 GB. You can typically sell rest of 40 GB for Rs 100 per GB. That would be Rs 4000 & what if your internet only costs you Rs 3000. That would be free internet for you & Rs 1000 extra money. Right :-) . You not only get free internet but eventually make money by sharing your Wifi.
If you stay in an apartment building, or a place like BTM Layout in Bangalore, you would have a lot of people around you who could have just moved in & looking to get a new internet connection. Instead of that, they could simply use your Wifi & pay you for that.
Griggi is built as an Openwrt package. So people already have Openwrt installed on their router can do 1 click install of Griggi on their router.
Get your Griggi router
Now the best part. We can install Griggi on the router & give it to you for the router cost price. This facility is only available for people in Bangalore, India.
- Drop us an email at griggi@googlegroups.com mentioning your phone number.
- We will tell you how much we can get the router for you. Typically we will buy it from Amazon/Flipkart or get one from S P Road (whichever is cheaper).
- Once you say yes, we will procure the router, install Openwrt & Griggi on it & deliver it to your doorstep.
- You pay us the cost price once you get the router.
- If you do not like it, you are free to ask us for a return pickup for free.
Add your favorite router below
If you think there is a better budget router than the TP Link one we suggested above, do let us know through a comment below. We will evaluate it & update the article if we really think it is the best out there.
Also, if you have a feature request, or if there is something that is stopping you from trying Griggi, do let us know by dropping a comment below.