Consumer grade has taken a nosedive but it’s head and shoulders over what the ISPs give out now.
I had to install a new gateway for my mom the other day, the one supplied by Spectrum. I haven’t looked at or touched one of these things in years, I had no idea what they were like now.
I opened the box, set it up, plugged it in, saw that the only information the display gives customers now are the words “Power” and “Online”, unplugged it, put it back in the box, and told Mom “I love you too much to let this in your home. I’ll buy you a modem.”
I didn’t even get to the part where apparently you have to use an app to change the password, and the admin panel is not truly accessible anymore.
I found out that ISP provided crap can do one thing OK. I have an ISP provided cable modem / router / wifi doing only the cable modem part and bridging the connection to a MikroTik router. Then I have another ISP provided router / wifi only doing the wifi part, again bridged to the MikroTik.
Both the ISP provided boxes were crashing pretty consistently when they were doing routing, firewall, wifi etc. (torrenting with a VPN while watching a 4K stream over wifi would just melt the box) but when they’re only doing one thing they’ve been working fine.
The only eyesore in ly setup is my ISPs router, which is only used as a fiber modem at this point. I tried to probe my ISPs customer service for any info regarding the protocol in use, but I got nowhere with them. One of these days I might fire up wireshark to see how it’s connecting so I can replace it with my own, but that’d involve downtime.
My small ISP (in Germany) gives out AVM Fritzbox, and they may not be as good as ubiquity, but they are certainly not crap. The routers of the bigger ISPs have even gotten pretty good as well over here and no one is ever forced to use the ISP supplied box in Germany anyway.
I just use the Fritzbox as a router and disabled the WiFi, which I do with Ubiquity APs. In one or two years I may have had to restart it once or twice, that is good enough for me.
Yeah, they’re not the best compared to something like an Aruba, but they tend to have a lot of enterprise features that are mostly functional. You just have to play the firmware lottery sometimes with the APs especially. The switches are a bit less finicky. I would never touch their firewalls.
I bought a Cisco enterprise router and switch (2nd hand) - the level of available configuration is great but the noise of the fans started to do my head in. I need to figure out how to get them wired up somewhere I can’t hear them all the time.
There is more than 1 way to get that level on config without having a loud energy hungry rack mounted hw… Pfsense or openwrt are just 2 of them. Drop them on a good arm device or power efficient x86 minipc and u get the best of both worlds. You lose on the seamless updates, but unless you are some high profile or paranoic person, no APT will target that 0 day in your network…
I’ve maintained my own LANs for decades and don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a router driver. They just have little web servers on them that you log into for your settings.
Oh, ok, gotcha. Here’s my instructions for doing it on a Ubiquiti Dream Machine. Not bad at all!
Edit: Ohhhhh, you’re talking about not doing WRT54G on a D-Link again, not not getting some enterprise-grade stuff. I think I’m on the same page now, sorry!
I’ve got a rack and PoE ceiling- and wall-mounted access points, but my router is still a TP-Link Archer C7 running OpenWRT.
Got a recommendation? I’d like to have a (cheap-ish) rackmount router running something open-source like OpenWRT or OPNsense, but even “small office”-class stuff that comes in regular metal rectangular chassis is much less than 19" wide and doesn’t come with ears for rack-mounting.
Fortigate does have licensing, but that’s only for support, which affects firmware downloads. The company account that I use for those has the last hardware license expiring this april. The hardware will continue to work, but I will have no way of updating it if a security hole were to be discovered.
As far as running license costs go, I have to admit that I kind of like Meraki, even though I am ideologically opposed to hardware subscriptions. It make management of loads of hardware much easier, and when a VPN goes down I can stull teoubleshoot it remotely.
Also, I will concede that the router I use is severe overkill. I could’ve gotten away with much less, but I’d rather rwcycle leftovers from work than see it end up on a trash heap. Ask me how I have so many rack mounted servers.
Ubiquiti’s Unifi and TP-Link’s Omada are certainly trying to edge in on Meraki from the Prosumer level (and not having to pay license fees to unlock hardware you already have is a plus). They both have local control hardware / software too if you don’t trust them with your data.
Fortinet was on my shortlist, along with OPNsense’s prebuilt hardware. Ended up just sticking with Mikrotik and getting 10Gb going for less than half the price though. Might be overkill but sure makes my media server and backups faster. Now if only Windows could actually saturate the link and not struggle to get 5Gb
I was considering this but I didn’t feel it was worth my time and money. I just bought an asus soho router for $60 and waiting for it to come. Planning on outting openwrt on it and it should perform just fine. I don’t need to cover a huge area at home so I don’t see any issues with it.
Doing a proper network would cost me like $100 for the router and another $100 something for the wap. Not including my time wiring and setting everything up.
I’d imagine it depends on your needs. For the vast majority of people who just need to stream video or play games, a regular ass consumer router is more then enough.
Neither.
19" rack mount router and switch supplying PoE to a proper wall mount access point that allows for vlan tagging per ssid.
I’m so done with consumer grade crap. After my WRT54G had to be replaced, nothing quite measured up unless I went for industrial grade hardware.
Consumer grade has taken a nosedive but it’s head and shoulders over what the ISPs give out now.
I had to install a new gateway for my mom the other day, the one supplied by Spectrum. I haven’t looked at or touched one of these things in years, I had no idea what they were like now.
I opened the box, set it up, plugged it in, saw that the only information the display gives customers now are the words “Power” and “Online”, unplugged it, put it back in the box, and told Mom “I love you too much to let this in your home. I’ll buy you a modem.”
I didn’t even get to the part where apparently you have to use an app to change the password, and the admin panel is not truly accessible anymore.
I found out that ISP provided crap can do one thing OK. I have an ISP provided cable modem / router / wifi doing only the cable modem part and bridging the connection to a MikroTik router. Then I have another ISP provided router / wifi only doing the wifi part, again bridged to the MikroTik.
Both the ISP provided boxes were crashing pretty consistently when they were doing routing, firewall, wifi etc. (torrenting with a VPN while watching a 4K stream over wifi would just melt the box) but when they’re only doing one thing they’ve been working fine.
The only eyesore in ly setup is my ISPs router, which is only used as a fiber modem at this point. I tried to probe my ISPs customer service for any info regarding the protocol in use, but I got nowhere with them. One of these days I might fire up wireshark to see how it’s connecting so I can replace it with my own, but that’d involve downtime.
My small ISP (in Germany) gives out AVM Fritzbox, and they may not be as good as ubiquity, but they are certainly not crap. The routers of the bigger ISPs have even gotten pretty good as well over here and no one is ever forced to use the ISP supplied box in Germany anyway.
I just use the Fritzbox as a router and disabled the WiFi, which I do with Ubiquity APs. In one or two years I may have had to restart it once or twice, that is good enough for me.
Or go with Unifi. I’d label them “prosumer” gear.
I haven’t used Unifi myself, but from what I’m hering, that’s an apt description.
Yeah, they’re not the best compared to something like an Aruba, but they tend to have a lot of enterprise features that are mostly functional. You just have to play the firmware lottery sometimes with the APs especially. The switches are a bit less finicky. I would never touch their firewalls.
I have their USG firewall and it’s been rock solid for years. Looking forward to its successor.
I bought a Cisco enterprise router and switch (2nd hand) - the level of available configuration is great but the noise of the fans started to do my head in. I need to figure out how to get them wired up somewhere I can’t hear them all the time.
There is more than 1 way to get that level on config without having a loud energy hungry rack mounted hw… Pfsense or openwrt are just 2 of them. Drop them on a good arm device or power efficient x86 minipc and u get the best of both worlds. You lose on the seamless updates, but unless you are some high profile or paranoic person, no APT will target that 0 day in your network…
When I bought my house a couple of years ago I decided early on that I want a rack tucked away somewhere. Noise was part of the reason.
I miss my old D-Link but I’m not about to start maintaining my own router
-drivers-firmware.I’ve maintained my own LANs for decades and don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a router driver. They just have little web servers on them that you log into for your settings.
Sorry I was referring to the firmware on which the router operates. Misuse of industry terms and lingo on my part.
Oh, ok, gotcha. Here’s my instructions for doing it on a Ubiquiti Dream Machine. Not bad at all!
Edit: Ohhhhh, you’re talking about not doing WRT54G on a D-Link again, not not getting some enterprise-grade stuff. I think I’m on the same page now, sorry!
This is what I’m working towards 🥺
I fucking hate it. Replaced my shitty Isp router with a proper Opnsense box and I love it
I’ve got a rack and PoE ceiling- and wall-mounted access points, but my router is still a TP-Link Archer C7 running OpenWRT.
Got a recommendation? I’d like to have a (cheap-ish) rackmount router running something open-source like OpenWRT or OPNsense, but even “small office”-class stuff that comes in regular metal rectangular chassis is much less than 19" wide and doesn’t come with ears for rack-mounting.
I’m picky with many things, but routers isn’t one of them. I tend to scavenge leftovers at work. Right now I have a Fortigate 101E
I too would not be picky with a free $4,000 router, especially one that doesn’t lock fucking everything down without licensing (thanks Cisco).
Fortigate does have licensing, but that’s only for support, which affects firmware downloads. The company account that I use for those has the last hardware license expiring this april. The hardware will continue to work, but I will have no way of updating it if a security hole were to be discovered.
As far as running license costs go, I have to admit that I kind of like Meraki, even though I am ideologically opposed to hardware subscriptions. It make management of loads of hardware much easier, and when a VPN goes down I can stull teoubleshoot it remotely.
Also, I will concede that the router I use is severe overkill. I could’ve gotten away with much less, but I’d rather rwcycle leftovers from work than see it end up on a trash heap. Ask me how I have so many rack mounted servers.
Ubiquiti’s Unifi and TP-Link’s Omada are certainly trying to edge in on Meraki from the Prosumer level (and not having to pay license fees to unlock hardware you already have is a plus). They both have local control hardware / software too if you don’t trust them with your data.
Fortinet was on my shortlist, along with OPNsense’s prebuilt hardware. Ended up just sticking with Mikrotik and getting 10Gb going for less than half the price though. Might be overkill but sure makes my media server and backups faster. Now if only Windows could actually saturate the link and not struggle to get 5Gb
I was considering this but I didn’t feel it was worth my time and money. I just bought an asus soho router for $60 and waiting for it to come. Planning on outting openwrt on it and it should perform just fine. I don’t need to cover a huge area at home so I don’t see any issues with it.
Doing a proper network would cost me like $100 for the router and another $100 something for the wap. Not including my time wiring and setting everything up.
I’d imagine it depends on your needs. For the vast majority of people who just need to stream video or play games, a regular ass consumer router is more then enough.