Router recommendations? (under 100CAD)

Start with a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. It's a tiny little box that's easily hidden away and forgotten about, with five Ethernet ports (one for the internet, four for your home). The web interface is extensive and has every feature you could ever want and thousands of other features you can safely ignore.

It does not do wifi - and that's fine. Because for wifi to work well, the antenna has to be in a central location where you probably don't want half a dozen ethernet cables, power supplies, etc etc.

You can use it with almost any wifi access point (or even a full wifi router, configured to not do any routing), but I recommen done of these: https://ui.com/us/en/wifi/flagship

They have five current models on that page but there are more:

• U6 Enterprise - designed to be used by several hundred people at the same time. Forget that one.
• U7 Pro - the latest flagship Wifi 7 model (you said you don't even care about wifi 6, so probably forget that too)
• U6 Pro - their previous Flaghsip, with Wifi 6. Probably overkill for you but worth considering
• U6 Long Range - basically the same device but with a physically larger antenna to extend the range over 2,000 feet under ideal conditions
• U6+ - a confusingly named cheaper variant that is also smaller. I would buy this one — not because it's cheaper, but because it's the smallest one.

They are all ceiling mounted. Ceiling mounts are the way to go. Put them in the middle of a large central room in your home. It will provide perfect 5Ghz coverage within your home and your devices will seamlessly switch to 2.4Ghz when you leave the home (it'll probably work on your entire back/front yard and maybe even a bit down the street... even if you don't buy the "Long Range" model.

If your house has walls (or floors) that make it a faraday cage, then you will need to buy more than one access point. Often only one is needed but they are designed to work with multiple if you require that (potentially thousands, these access points are used for football stadiums, music festivals, sky scrapers, etc).

If you can't drill a hole in your ceiling, then buy a thin (flat profile) white ethernet cable use 3M adhesive strips to attach it the cable and wifi access point to your ceiling, nobody will notice unless they look up. You might need to patch up the paint when you move out but ceiling paint is dirt cheap and very forgiving (because it's matte paint).

If you refuse to go with a ceiling mounted access point, Ubiquiti has wall mounted and bench top variants. But they're not as good - ceilings are usually made of thin flimsy material while walls are usually solid structures. That makes a big difference when it comes to real world wireless performance and reliability.

It's a bit more than your budget, but I'd argue it's money well spent. My EdgeRouter X and old Unifi access point are approaching 7 years old and they have never even been restarted except when we've had power failures or when I've moved house... totally worth the money. The only problem I ever had is about 5 years in I forgot the password and wanted to change a setting... I had to do a factory reset. No biggie.

But if that's too expensive, you should be able to find older models of the same hardware (especially predecessors to the U6+). Like I said, mine is 7 years old and working perfectly. I could see myself still using it in another 7 years - anything where I need really high performance is connected to the EdgeRouter X with an ethernet cable.

PS: one of the ethernet ports on your EdgeRouter X is a "PoE OUT" port. Plug your Unifi wifi access point into that port, and you can toss the power supply that came with the access point in a drawer or just the rubbish bin. The EdgeRouter X will provide power over the ethernet cable.

Note: some Ubiquiti hardware is garbage, and the company seems to be going downhill lately. But they still have excellent products

That's a rather large area to cover with a single router. You will need multiple access points if you want decent speeds.

A cheap (or used) mesh system is better than any router + extender crap, especially if you have a modem router combo that can't even output decent speeds 10 feet away in straight view, at least this is my experience with it.

I have two Dynalink DL-WRX36 routers flashed with OpenWRT, and they work really well. They’re great routers for the price ($80 USD), the specs are a lot closer to well known brands that are a lot more expensive. I’ve had them for about a year with no issues. See also https://openwrt.org/toh/dynalink/dl-wrx36. I got it because I wanted a lot of range, and it seems to work for that.

Under 100 AD there were no routers

Also, would be nice if they can support sharing a external hdd as a network drive

https://www.amazon.ca/Linksys-E8450-CA-AX3200-GIGABIT-Router/dp/B09HRFXVBK?th=1&psc=1

It can run OpenWRT but search the forums so you know how to make it work.

Check out gear by GL.iNet. They’re pretty cheap, albeit low specced, but they come with OpenWRT flavor preinstalled. They’re an unbelievable value proposition and I’ve been running mine with no noticeable issues since September. For you I would look at something like their GL-AX1800. Poke around on their store, but that AX1800 is just shy of $100 in the US.

I got mine specifically because of my home lab set up and them being recommended by my work’s cybersec manager.

Top of my head: like a Linksys MR7340 hydra should have enough ram and storage for openwrt for a few years iirc but only 3 Ethernet port so a switch might be needed. Think its 50 USD rn but I'll have to double check that. Another option would be like a used Linksys AC2200

Maybe something like a used r7000 with freshtomato? If it's in the middle of the middle floor maybe? Idk

Sounds like more of your issue is software. Why not try flashing your current device with one of the open firmware projects first and see if that doesn't at least make the hardware useful?