> What kind of trouble did you have with ASUS and D-Link? Security or the lack of configuration options? Haven't bought them in a while, but I remember them being somewhat decent.
I should caveat all of my opinion with the fact that I stopped buying this stuff the best part of a decade ago when I decided to go open source, so things may very well have changed in that time.
My experience with a particular manufacturer I won't name, which provides solar panel monitoring and optimisation equipment that I have installed at home suggests otherwise though, it's bad to the point of being unsure if I should laugh or cry.
Anyway, my experience back then was that Netgear and ASUS stuff was generally overpriced, performed reasonably though not amazingly well but had support dropped within 2-3 years and were left with severe vulnerabilities.
D-Link I found lacked features, performed generally weaker than the others, and were lucky to get any updates.
I can't recommend anything these days because I haven't used any in a long while, so my old-timer advice is moot. If I had to pick a branch of off-the-shelf to buy today because I was forced to it'd probably be Ubiquiti.
That said, I'm a dev in the communications-security space, my requirements are a little different to my family and friends, I have static IPs, lots of hosted stuff, and a low risk-appetite for vulns on my network, while a typical household will have a dynamic IP, unlikely to be hosting much if anything and so their attack surface is lower.
What's likely to be my next move personally? I currently run a Protectli box with about 90% more power than I need for my 1Gb network and 1Gb/1Gb WAN, but the NICs (5 Intel NICs) are the limiting factor, I'll likely buy something similar with 10Gb when the time comes and carry on running OPNSense and hopefully Coreboot.