20 replies to this topic

[Fozzies]

can anyone recommend a decent home (pro) wireless router/and or AP controller?

currently looking at watchguard t10w, but its a bit more than i wanted to pay. Fed up with both virgin medias crappy router, and also a billion router i "acquired", just want a reliable router with ethernet wan, and with wifi capable of 20+devices at a time ( currently have 4 tabs, 3 mobiles,2 lappies, and  printer on wifi)

a dot1q unit would be very nice, hence me looking at the watchguard, i use my home network as a test bed for work stuff, but not essential

 

please, ive looked at domestic netgears, and i love their stability, but im looking for something more than that, complete with the stability. Never having owned any decent home router other than a netgear, and having been bitten by a billion router, which looked great on paper, jumping into d-link/asus/zyxcel worries me

 

thanks

[SonicTHI]

WRT54GL

[Fozzies]

looks like a nice bit of kit, as does the .ac compliant version, but i cant find anywhere the .1q , either in its standard form, or once wrt installed?

[Mitch]

You wouldn't need a 802.1Q compatible router unless you're planning on VLANing things off, which is a bit excessive for a home network. Just make sure to read up on reviews etc.

[Fozzies]

I do want to be able to route between vlans without having a layer 3 switch. The watch guard seems expensive at 300 squids excluding licenses although I know it well from work, but it's the only one I know to be reliable. I was recommended my current router by a company called comms express, and it's a fail so was hoping someone here would know of a cheaper unit that worked well

[Mitch]

Really? Well a little T10 is always fantastic, never looked into domestic routers with VLAN capability though. If I remember correctly you'd also have to buy an AP for wireless if you went the Watchguard route though.

 

Edit: Your best bet is probably a Draytek 2925n. I should have read your OP properly!

Edited by Mitch, 05 July 2016 - 08:38 am.

[Fozzies]

ive wondered about the drayteks but never worked with them, are they reliable? That particular one has a negative comment about dropping connections, but who knows if it was set-up properly. Word of mouth is far preferable imo, and thanks Mitch, that does look like what im looking for, or at least one of their range.   Is this one that you specifically have used?

Edited by Fozzies, 05 July 2016 - 04:20 pm.

[Mitch]

Yep I have put them in a good few offices with no problems, fairly simple to configure. I've never used VLANs on them personally so am not so sure about that but everything else works as advertised!

[Fozzies]

Cheers mitch +1 when I get on my pc tomorrow for your help.

And anythings gotta be easier to set up than a watchguard surely

[Mitch]

Haha they aren't too bad! We had to put an M500 in someone's building once who wanted ~150 rules on his iirc, was a ball of fun...

[blackice8r]

I have the asus RT-N66U  "dark night" at home and I'm very happy with it. I use openvpn on my phone and laptop to connect to my home network,  easily done via the asus router.

Asus also offers a free alternative to DynDNS.

We have it installed on mutiple client sites too actually (when they wouldn't want to spend money for a better sollution). For the money, I think it's great, great range and signal strenght on the wifi.

It's far better then the mid range kit from Zyxel for ex.

 

As for a more expensive and Pro sollution I heard the aruba kit is good http://www.arubanetworks.com , never used it myself but I heard good things about the kit.

[Mitch]

Yup Arubas are fantastic; use them a lot at work as well, but very pricey for domestic use and are only APs, not a full router. The main feature of those is that you don't need to have a separate WiFi controller set up (unless you're going for a very large set up), it's all done on the APs themselves, so it's not really worth the value unless you're going to get a few, imo.

[Fozzies]

sorry, the arubas have a wlc internally? as in they devices switch ap in 10 milliseconds when roaming? if so, that is what i really want at home! it was one of the reasons i was origonally looking at the watchguard, so i had a proper wifi network at home

[Mitch]

The controllerless series they sell (200 series) each works as a controller. What happens is you plug one in and set it up on the web interface and it will be the master. Then start plugging the others in on your network, and they will broadcast to find the master, which will send them the config. The main point being that if your master goes down for any reason, a different AP will take over and be the new temp master, so there's no single point of failure. They also have extremely good coverage, so I'd be surprised if you needed any more than one, two at most.

 

But also very expensive! I'm not actually sure if you can buy them domestically at all; only through distrubutors as far as I know, unless you want to try eBay. Aruba were recently acquired by HP(E) and are undergoing a strange transition where HP kind of want to keep them marketed as Aruba because it's a very good and well known brand, but they've also started selling some with HP logos on as well, each with different prices as well which is lovely.

[blackice8r]

ebuyer sells some http://www.ebuyer.co...ss-Points/Aruba

 

but yah...not exactly cheap

[Fozzies]

as you say, 2 of those do the job, without the extra expense of a dedicated wlc

gonna set the company buyer on a mission for me

thanks to you both