Best routers out there ?

[Berni]

Yeah the government trying to filter the internet is just a exercise in futility. Tho to be fair even basic things like DNS are quite effective against the average internet user that has no idea what a DNS or IP even is.

At least the grumpy old men in UK didn't come out with such an ridiculous argument that Australia did against end to end encryption in messaging apps:
"Prime Minister claims laws of mathematics 'do not apply' in Australia"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/malcolm-turnbull-prime-minister-laws-of-mathematics-do-not-apply-australia-encryption-l-a7842946.html

[Bratster]

I use a separate router for wired connections, and access points for wireless.

At home I have an old Netgear router which I think has been discontinued but it still works with no problems. More recently I've been using Ubiquiti Edgerouters.

For access points I now use Ubiquiti Unifi access points.

I don't have experience with a broad range of devices, so I can't say what is "best". But the Ubiquiti Edgerouters and Unifi access points do work well for a relatively modest amount of money.

I'll put in another recommendation for Ubiquiti gear, we've got a few edgerouters in use at different locations.

The edgerouter 4 is our go to choice for any new installations.

They work great, our standard configuration is 1 wan port and 1 lan port and then use a separate switch to handle giving network to everything.



 We also use a bunch of unifi access points for WiFi and air Max radios for various long range links.



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Bassman59]

With 'best' i mean the following
- best throughput WIRED and wireless. Most reviews blabber about theoretical bandwidths on wifi but nobody talks about what the router can really handle. Most of my stuff is wired. The router should be able to handle many datastreams simultaneously and not fall over it has to manage 50+ devices all blabbering randomly with each other.

Dunno if it's really "best" but recently I bought a Synology RT2600ac router to replace the old stuff. It has a gigabit WAN port (the cable modem has a gigabit port), four gigabit LAN ports (one of which can be repurposed as a redundant/failover WAN port), and USB 3 and USB 2 ports. One LAN port connects to the Apple TV box near the router. Two of the other ports go to other rooms in the house, one being where we hide the security camera DVR and the other is my work room. In the latter I have an eight-port switch (which needs to be 16, but whatever). The three computers in the workroom are all on wired gigabit Ethernet.

Things are "noticeably" faster than with the old hardware. I hooked up a couple of USB 3 SuperSpeed drives to the router for Time Machine backup use, and those backups are faster. Most of our TV watching is streaming, and even with the kid watching video on his iPad while my wife watches TV everything seems "snappy."

The router has some pretty nifty management and monitoring tools, and a really handy VPN server feature.

WiFi can be extended with their mesh boxes, with which I have no experience.

[free_electron]

right now i am leaning towards going with

- ubuiquiti Amplifi-HD router with possibly a second one as RAMP. holding off on the second one for now.
- three mikrotik 24 port smart switches.

i can restructure my wiring in the cabinet so all machinery hangs off of one mikrotik. Including the router.

if i add up all theoretical bandwidth there i end up at 4 gb/s
- 3gb streams to the nasses ( my computers cant pump any faster as they are 1gb each)
- some iot stuff. 100 meg max
- ipcam and netflix/roku/appletv streams to various media players. 1gbyte max (which is grossly overstated as i can play three 4k movies over my current internet which is 300mbit without issues)

so all machinery sits in the cabinet. 2 wires leave
- 1 gig link from the modem to router
- 1 sfp to sfp cable carrying the 10g link (which i can not possibly fill up)

the wiring panel has a second mikrotik switch. There all the stuff from the in-wall wiring is plugged feeding the various devices in the house.

from the wiring panel one cat6 cable will carry a 10g link to my office where the thrid mikrotik switch will be.

I don't need 24 ports everywhere , but these machine are simply the cheapest. a simple 8 port netgear with a 10g link costs 200$ ...

I'm still a bit reluctant as mikrotik is a new brand for me and i have never seen them in stores.

[Monkeh]

I'm still a bit reluctant as mikrotik is a new brand for me and i have never seen them in stores.

When was the last time you saw Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, Nokia, Meraki and so forth in a store?

Consumer availability is generally a negative, not a positive.

[free_electron]

I'm still a bit reluctant as mikrotik is a new brand for me and i have never seen them in stores.

When was the last time you saw Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, Nokia, Meraki and so forth in a store?

Consumer availability is generally a negative, not a positive.

Plenty of times. Mainly in used equipment dealers though >  and cheap !. Cisco 48 port gigabit POE switch with redundant power supplies and 4 10G uplinks for 49$ ... but then again . They make a bloody racket , are humongous ( 19 inch rack and full depth ) and suck power like anything.
And not just one but stacks of hundreds ! Mellanox, Brocade , Palo alto networks, Baraccuda appliances , Dell , HP , Cisco , Juniper, 3Com , Meraki and plenty of others.
Makes you wonder why these expensive machines get ditched. What did those users upgrade to ?

I scored my Dell machine for 10$ ... works a treat but its big and bulky and powerhungry and time for it to go to the 'for parts' heap.
Same for NAS machines. There's plenty of HP Dell and SUN NAS boxes with room for 24 to 48 drives ( mainly SAS though. Sata is rare ) for 10$. but you need two people to lift those things. not suitable for my walk-in-closet .. SWMBO would bang me on the head with it.

[Mr. Scram]

Equipment gets ditched because service contracts run out. Buying off liability is a huge factor. The equipment is often aging at that point, so migrate to something new and be done with it. You don't want to know how much otherwise perfectly fine equipment gets trashed every year. More carrion for us vultures it seems. Whatever the case, Mikrotik is a known brand name.

[free_electron]

On the mikrotik switch . anyone has actual experience with those ? it seems there are issues with swos... some switches are shipped with a version that has a broken dhcp.
At powerup the config console runs at 192.168.88.1.. That's already different from most network equipment that sits in 192.168.1.xxx .
So what is going to happen if connect three of these things together.. they will all open 192.168.88.1 and create a network problem preventing from connecting to configure.
i don't want to install these things and then find out i have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them to work.
it should be plug and play.

if i change their ip addresses ( i do not want them to be dynamic. everything is static in my home network where possible. either by being driven from the router , or hard set in the devices ) will this be retained ?

[Berni]

Yeah for some reason Mikrotik uses 192.168.88.1 as the default but its easily changed to whatever your network uses.(Tho can require some networking knowhow in some cases)

As long as you only use basic switch functionality it shouldn't really matter what it IP it is set up for (low level switching only looks at MAC addresses), but you may loose the ability to get into its configuration interface if the IPs are screwy. The typical way of handling this is to just change the IP and give each one a unique static IP like 192.168.1.2   192.168.1.3    192.168.1.4... also write it down on a sticker and stick it to the gear so you know what it is 3 years later when you want to fix something. Other way is to go oldschool and use the serial service port on the switch if it even still has one.

[Monkeh]

At powerup the config console runs at 192.168.88.1.. That's already different from most network equipment that sits in 192.168.1.xxx .

That would be the point. Lots of people insist on just dumping their networks somewhere obvious (ever wonder why it's 192.168.1.0/24? Because too many people were causing problems by using 192.168.0.0/24...) and things get messy.

So what is going to happen if connect three of these things together.. they will all open 192.168.88.1 and create a network problem preventing from connecting to configure.

The same thing which happens when you connect any unconfigured devices without thinking: It doesn't work.

it should be plug and play.

Yes. One at a time, preconfigure, and then off you go.

if i change their ip addresses ( i do not want them to be dynamic. everything is static in my home network where possible. either by being driven from the router , or hard set in the devices ) will this be retained ?

Of course it will.

[free_electron]

Yes. One at a time, preconfigure, and then off you go.

I don't agree with that. Proper equipment will search for a dhcp server and obtain an address. Not use just a some hardcoded one, which may already conflict with something else.
In my current router configuration i can just say : for this device : always hand out that ip address.
Any new device ends up in an 'unknown' bucket and they get a free random address. Then i can pick it up from there and assign an address.

Having to use a laptop , manually configure the laptops ip , then hooking it to the switch , changing parameter , unhooking the laptop from the switch , rebooting the switch , plugging the switch to the router ...  ugh ... not very friendly.
That's already a big turnoff for me. i see trouble and i will get frustrated.
What if , after a power cycle , the switches do not come up in proper order ?

Here is the topology : switch 1 connected to switch 2 using one sfp link . switch 2 connected to switch 3 using another sfp link.
router sits on port 1 of switch 1.

Assume switch 3 is the fastest booting up , 1 and 2 are still cycling. so switch 3 cannot lease an ip address as it can not see the router ( switch 1 and 2 are still booting.)  what will happen ?

i'm just trying to avoid buying a bunch of stuff and then , during install having to spend hours/days on forums finding answers for annoying things like that. I scrubbed the mikrotik forums and there were people with the same problems like i am anticipating. As recent as a few months ago switches were shipped with buggy firmware and required a lot of hoop jumping to get the new firmware on it to resolve this.

i am not a networks specialist and have ZERO interest in becoming one. Things must be plug and play. I'd rather pay 500$ more in hardware that works out of the box than spend 1 hour futzing around to do a firmware update and having to muck around with manually configuring a pc to talk to the switch first.

[Monkeh]

Yes. One at a time, preconfigure, and then off you go.

I don't agree with that. Proper equipment will search for a dhcp server and obtain an address. Not use just a some hardcoded one, which may already conflict with something else.

What if you don't have a DHCP server? What if you just want to set it up in isolation before approaching a live network? You cannot please everyone.

Having to use a laptop , manually configure the laptops ip , then hooking it to the switch , changing parameter , unhooking the laptop from the switch , rebooting the switch , plugging the switch to the router ...  ugh ... not very friendly.
That's already a big turnoff for me. i see trouble and i will get frustrated.
What if , after a power cycle , the switches do not come up in proper order ?

Here is the topology : switch 1 connected to switch 2 using one sfp link . switch 2 connected to switch 3 using another sfp link.
router sits on port 1 of switch 1.

Assume switch 3 is the fastest booting up , 1 and 2 are still cycling. so switch 3 cannot lease an ip address as it can not see the router ( switch 1 and 2 are still booting.)  what will happen ?

It will not get an IP. It should continue trying DHCP until it does. Once it's configured it doesn't even need an IP, so why worry?

i am not a networks specialist and have ZERO interest in becoming one. Things must be plug and play. I'd rather pay 500$ more in hardware that works out of the box than spend 1 hour futzing around to do a firmware update and having to muck around with manually configuring a pc to talk to the switch first.

Your goals conflict. You want fast networking, and you want plug and pray. The two do not co-exist in any reasonable fashion.

Pay someone $500 to do it for you if you're that desperate to avoid an hour of work.

[free_electron]

What if you don't have a DHCP server? What if you just want to set it up in isolation before approaching a live network? You cannot please everyone.

then there should be a hardware button to hold during powerup that lets it start with a fixed ip. DHCP should be default.

Your goals conflict. You want fast networking, and you want plug and pray. The two do not co-exist in any reasonable fashion.

2019 and we still have stupid shit like that. 

Pay someone $500 to do it for you if you're that desperate to avoid an hour of work.

it's not the hour of work. it's my blood pressure !
Modern stuff is so complicated it becomes aggravating.

There is multiple of these questions on the mikrotik forums. people can't get the damn things to work or update firmware without jumping through hoops. Even their tech support is useless.

Tech support replied : 'connect to the serial port'

wonderful ...
first of all : none of my computers don't have serial ports anymore. Good luck finding anything built in the last 5 years that still has a rs232 port. even then .. do you need a straight or crossed cable ? and will i have one around ...
second: now i need to go buy a usb to serial adapter, find a terminal program , find out the baudrate etc .. urgh ...
third : your damn switch doesn't have a serial port anymore ! the current versions (in last 2 years) sold have ditched it , so why does tech support even give that as an answer ?!?

That guy got very frustrated ...

i do not want to end up in that situation. so before i purchase this stuff i do some investigation.

[Monkeh]

What if you don't have a DHCP server? What if you just want to set it up in isolation before approaching a live network? You cannot please everyone.

then there should be a hardware button to hold during powerup that lets it start with a fixed ip. DHCP should be default.

Do I need to point out the security implications of changing system configuration via a button?

third : your damn switch doesn't have a serial port anymore ! the current versions (in last 2 years) sold have ditched it , so why does tech support even give that as an answer ?!?

I'm looking at their switches and all the larger models have console ports..

[Mr. Scram]

On the mikrotik switch . anyone has actual experience with those ? it seems there are issues with swos... some switches are shipped with a version that has a broken dhcp.
At powerup the config console runs at 192.168.88.1.. That's already different from most network equipment that sits in 192.168.1.xxx .
So what is going to happen if connect three of these things together.. they will all open 192.168.88.1 and create a network problem preventing from connecting to configure.
i don't want to install these things and then find out i have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them to work.
it should be plug and play.

if i change their ip addresses ( i do not want them to be dynamic. everything is static in my home network where possible. either by being driven from the router , or hard set in the devices ) will this be retained ?

You're really looking for trouble where there is none. Assigning fixed IP addresses is common and not hard to do. Being so averse to configuring is  asking for trouble and persistent problems instead of doing it right once. Either settle for a simple box and suffer performance issues or buy proper kit and do a basic setup. It's far from rocket science. If you want a magic button which makes everything work, hire a guy and don't be skimpy.

[free_electron]

Do I need to point out the security implications of changing system configuration via a button?

only at powerup.

third : your damn switch doesn't have a serial port anymore ! the current versions (in last 2 years) sold have ditched it , so why does tech support even give that as an answer ?!?

I'm looking at their switches and all the larger models have console ports..
[/quote]

not the one he was asking about. even then.

[Monkeh]

Do I need to point out the security implications of changing system configuration via a button?

only at powerup.

If you can press the button you can power cycle.

[free_electron]

On the mikrotik switch . anyone has actual experience with those ? it seems there are issues with swos... some switches are shipped with a version that has a broken dhcp.
At powerup the config console runs at 192.168.88.1.. That's already different from most network equipment that sits in 192.168.1.xxx .
So what is going to happen if connect three of these things together.. they will all open 192.168.88.1 and create a network problem preventing from connecting to configure.
i don't want to install these things and then find out i have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them to work.
it should be plug and play.

if i change their ip addresses ( i do not want them to be dynamic. everything is static in my home network where possible. either by being driven from the router , or hard set in the devices ) will this be retained ?

You're really looking for trouble where there is none. Assigning fixed IP addresses is common and not hard to do. Being so averse to configuring is  asking for trouble and persistent problems instead of doing it right once. Either settle for a simple box and suffer performance issues or buy proper kit and do a basic setup. It's far from rocket science. If you want a magic button which makes everything work, hire a guy and don't be skimpy.

i do want hrd coded. my gripe is i need to muck with configuring a pc in a non standard way to get into the config page.
and if i power up three of these things at the same time i have network conflicts.

i cant even remember how to configure a pc with a hard network address..

[free_electron]

Do I need to point out the security implications of changing system configuration via a button?

only at powerup.

If you can press the button you can power cycle.

yes , exactly , but only if you power cycle when holding the button does configuration kick in.
this requires you to be in my house , next to the switch to be able to muck with it.
if you are at my front door there is nothing you can do to hack my network.
you can powercycle my house but since you are not holding the button nothing happens.

same reason i don't allow router config from the wan side.

if you are in my house it is too late anyway.

setting changes require physical presence. they can not be done remotely (unless someone physically presses a button to allow changes. once changes are committed they are locked until next power+button press)
but then , that would be my preference.

after further reading it looks like the new os version does look for dhcp. if it finds one it grabs an address from there , if not it defaults to 192.168.88.1
so i hope i will get a machine with latest version. if not i'll have to jump through hoops.

[Monkeh]

Do I need to point out the security implications of changing system configuration via a button?

only at powerup.

If you can press the button you can power cycle.

yes , exactly , but only if you power cycle when holding the button does configuration kick in.
this requires you to be in my house , next to the switch to be able to muck with it.
if you are at my front door there is nothing you can do to hack my network.
you can powercycle my house but since you are not holding the button nothing happens.

same reason i don't allow router config from the wan side.

if you are in my house it is too late anyway.

Your limited concerns are not their only concerns.

after further reading it looks like the new os version does look for dhcp. if it finds one it grabs an address from there , if not it defaults to 192.168.88.1
so i hope i will get a machine with latest version. if not i'll have to jump through hoops.

And hopefully it can be configured away from using a static IP if DHCP fails..

The hoops are huge, touch the ground, and are large enough to walk through upright.

[Mr. Scram]

i do want hrd coded. my gripe is i need to muck with configuring a pc in a non standard way to get into the config page.
and if i power up three of these things at the same time i have network conflicts.

i cant even remember how to configure a pc with a hard network address..

Use Google. I seem to remember you're a clever guy and it's not rocket science. That button you're asking for is essentially what WPS does and that's a total security train wreck. You don't want to go anywhere near that.

[free_electron]

hehe.

first of all : let me apalogize if i come over as grumpy. don't take any of it personal.

In the 80's and 90's i did all of that stuff standing on one leg , one hand behind my back , other hand with a finger in my ear and using a pencil and my mouth typing in config files. and i loved it. all of it. All the technical hoops. And we didn't know any better because there wasn't anything else or better.
Then time passes and interests shift and you don't do that stuff for a while for a while and you grow accustomed to other things.

Alas, as i am growing older and time moves on i find myself more and more grumpy and short-fused.
My knee jerk reaction is : are we still dicking around with this 20 years on ? I'll look for something that doesn't need any of this. i am too old for this. i can't remember half of it. do i really need to go and look that stuff up ? again ... ?

-rant-
That's the reason i refuse to install windows 10. I can't find anything in that junk. If i wanted a command line to type in the name of the program to start i would go back to dos. And anything else you try to do is like going on a gopher hunt. It's all different from where it used to be under win 2k/xp/7. The stuff i grew up on.
It was already difficult enough adapting from win3 3.1 95 98 98se to the xp world. They changed the ui and control panels so drastically you had to learn a bunch of new stuff.
Isa cards were easy. Set jumpers for irq and base address and off you go. Then come these  newfangled plug and play isa boards can't even be configured if two are initially on same base address. What drunken swiss gyneacologist came up with that ?Why don't they have a 'slot' address so that shit can't happen ? ( solved in pci and pci express as the machine knows what lane you are in)

And now we have to do it all over again with win 10. they got us used to a start menu for 15 years , and then , out of the blue : you can't have that anymore. type it in. - mnjaaargh.... there goes my bloodpressure
And the endless update cycles and other crap you can't turn off. it is 2019 and they still cannot detect when you are working with the machine and postpone updates until when the machine is truly idle ( how hard is it to do environmental monitoring . it's 2 am , there has not been any movement or sound for the past 2 hours ( apart from snoring ) , no mouse or keyboard activity for 2 hours. virtually no net traffic... maybe now is a good time. oh and it falls in the middle of the allowed time period for updates. in fact it is three hours away from the given end time, so i should try now. let me pop up a notification that says i will do updates if i don't see a mouse or keyboard stroke in the next 15 minutes. if the system sees it is now only 20 minutes before end of given timeslot and it know the update will take 40 minutes : don't even start or suggest starting.

-endrant-

it is 2019 and i still have to muck with shit like we had to do in 1989. That's 30 years ! What have they done in those 30 years ? Made stuff more complicated !
We're going backwards. 2000 gates and 50k of code landed man on the moon.
5 billion gates and 2 gig of code to turn on a lightbulb today. lightbulbs with a quadcore cpu running linux. -urgh- 

And then, when you want to change a setting : go find your old serial port cable and dos pc and type in stuff  SERIOUSLY ?
Oh and if you are not careful someone will hack your lightbulb to use it as a bitcoin miner and use it as a gateway for the TOR network. While installing keyloggers to break into your bank account, while trying to flog you pills. Come on grampa take the blue pillz .. make grandma happy one more time. We'll be cleaning out the bank accounts.

and people ask me why i am grumpy ...

So , when i read that story about the guy having to find out how to flash the new version , using inexisting serial ports , reconfiguring the network on his pc , having to download files and a special program first , flashing it , then undoing all the networking stuff , getting it back where it needs to be. for a dumb thing like a switch ? that pretends to be carrier grade ? i can only say one thing : WTF?
No wonder so many people claim to get bad service from their carrier. The poor people in tech support are also screaming their head off. at their hardware providers ...

read it and weep :
https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=143728

[ogden]

and people ask me why i am grumpy ...

Because they do not see the obvious - that you are in fact old Back in the days I was configuring hardware out of my mind, now I am looking for plug & play solutions that just work out of the box - because of different perspective. Now I don't give a **k that SSID of my WiFi is "linksys" (kidding).

[Mr. Scram]

Time to get over it and get with the program, or get taken advantage of because you didn't firewall your lightbulb. It's going to happen sooner or later. Maybe it's best to give in and give up. I hear banks have pretty good restitution policies. Why bother with those pesky passwords at all!

[free_electron]

and people ask me why i am grumpy ...

Because they do not see the obvious - that you are in fact old Back in the days I was configuring hardware out of my mind, now I am looking for plug & play solutions that just work out of the box - because of different perspective. Now I don't give a **k that SSID of my WiFi is "linksys" (kidding).

i am. realistically speaking more than half of my lifespan is gone. ( i'm turning 49 this year ). time is precious. having to spend part of what remains finding a serial port cable for a port that doesn't exist is very off-putting. And the associated bloodpressure spike will move the needle even faster.

seriously i don't want to deal with stuff like that anymore. nobody should. it is ridiculous. in 30 years nobody came up with a better solution ? they should all be fired !