I have accumulated a lot of HA devices. I am going over my automations to cut down on traffic using less communication. I use routers that date back as some of my APs and one of those quit. I am interested in comments from people with a lot of HA wifi traffic. What should I be looking for in a router? What routers work well for you? My greenhouse is 250’ form my house and I have a buried CAT5 (not e) cable to that building (greenhouse and shop). Wish I could upgrade cable but not really feasible. So, using beam antenna for 2.8GHz wifi or using the existing cable are my choices. I would like to replace my old ax1200 router as soo as possible, so what do you suggest? Thank you, Doug in Michigan, USA 
How many devices?
Depends…but Unifi, TP Link and pfSense seem to be popular here because of their flexibility, features, and performance.
Besides addressing obsolescence, what specific requirements do you have (performance, security, cost, etc.)
Consumer-grade routers are a combination of a router, switch, and wireless access point in a single box. What you may want to consider is a set of devices that splits out those functions, so a router, one or more switches, and one or more access points. The cost and complexity is a bit higher, but for many, well worth it.
Your setup would potentially benefit from this if you could place a wifi access point in your greenhouse/shop and use your existing cable to connect it back to the router in your house. (Although I’m not expert enough to know how well a 250 foot run on Cat5 (non-e) would work.)
The gold-standard brand for this kind of setup is the Ubiquity Unifi line. A more budget-friendly competitor is TP-Link Omada - which is the system I use and am very happy with.
Hope this helps with your research!
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You can’t go wrong with a high-density Ubiquity access point.
If you want to go future proof forget about that CAT5 (not e) cable since this type of cable has become obsolete and will be phased out over time.
Cat5 cable provides a bandwidth of up to 100MHz, and its speed can range from 10Mbps to a maximum of 100 Mbps. While speed might not really matter for your use case Crosstalk (the electrical interference between cables when they are close to one another) definitely is. It leads to errors in data transmission that can prove to be fatal when it comes to the transmission of important and sensitive information. Furthermore Crosstalk reduces the speed at which cables can transmit information, resulting in a poor network performance.
If upgrading the ethernet cable to at least CAT5e (or better to CAT6 STP) is not an option I definetly would go the WiFi road to connect the greenhouse and shop to your main router. I have no experience with the network gear from TP-Link but I can recommend Ubiquity UniFi for your needs. For more information about their outdoor WiFi products take a look HERE.
Thank you, that does help. Two of my current routers are TP-Link and one is D-Link but they are old tech now. It is time to upgrade. I think TP-Link is what I will choose. I use a Motorola DOCSYS 3.1 modem/router and Gig switch on my Comcast entry cable. My other routers are AP all over my buildings on 10 acres (4 hectares).