@womack,

While you should still attempt to update your router's firmware, I am inclined to believe that the age of the technology in your router may be the cause of the buffering. Wireless N was a long time ago, and we have since moved to AC, then AX, then AXE, and now BE. It is worth checking what speeds you are able to receive on your laptop versus what you were expecting it to receive. The Router you have listed is only rated for a maximum of 300Mbps, but this speed would not be seen unless using a wired connection. Does the buffering continue if you lower the quality of your stream?

As a heads up, we are just now moving into the BE era of networking, or WI-Fi 7. This means you may start to see some more affordable upgrade paths arise as a result of AX and AXE networking "technically" becoming dated, even though it is what most households will use for the time being.

If you are using one of the newer versions of  Windows, you may have an extract tool built into your PC already through the file explorer; otherwise, some other common extraction tools are 7Zip, or Winrar. There are many tools out there, but these are at least the ones that I have personally used before.