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Ask Slashdot: Enterprise Level Network Devices For Home Use?
First time accepted submitter osho741 writes "I was wondering if anyone has enterprise level networking devices set up at home? I seem to go through at least 1 wireless consumer grade router a year or so. I can never seem to find one that last very long under just normal use. I thought maybe I would have better luck throwing together a network using used enterprise equipment. Has anyone done this? What would you recommend for a network that maxes out at 30mbps downstream from the ISP and an internal network that should be able to stream 1080p movies to 3 or 4 devices from a media server? Any thoughts and or suggestions are welcome."
What has become of Slashdot? The horror.....
Get a high end ASUS or Buffalo wireless router and put DD-WRT on it.
What do you consider "normal use"? Nailing them to a wall? Using them to shore up a levee?
Anyway, if your electronics are failing that fast and you aren't abusing them somehow, then they should be replaced under warranty.
http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN
Been using this one for almost a year, with no issues. Plenty of bells and whistles for the home business/power user.
Even the cheapest routers I have last much longer than a year. What are you doing to your routers that you kill one every year?
Buy a consumer-grade router, but use a UPS to ensure it receives clean power. Dirty power kills these things.
Do you toss it in the dishwasher when it gets dusty? How can you break so much stuff?
Actually, that might just be the right solution. If his rack-sized enterprise network equipment won't fit into the dishwasher, he won't try to wash it. You know how it is with connectors - the best way of preventing people from screwing things up is not to make them physically compatible.
Ezekiel 23:20
I've had lots of luck with HP Procurve gear. We use a couple of J8986A (530) access points at work and they seem to be unbeatable. For a router, run a linux box. Can be as little as a raspberry pi with VLANs split up by an external switch.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I'm a big fan of Apple Airport gear. They generally support the latest/fastest standards quite quickly, are easy to configure, have built-in PSUs rather than wall warts, and I've generally found their range to be better than average for consumer WiFi kit. Other than that latest models (which look ridiculous) they're generally neat and look OK in the living room. I've had one Airport Express die on me after 2 years of use, and that was already second hand when I bought it and spent its life behind a pile of hot hifi gear as an Airtunes sink.
Old PC + Vyatta Community Edition. ClearOS, Or many other open source routers.
FreeNAS or OpenFiler for SAN duties
WRT54G or newer device that can run full DD-WRT for an access point or router.
I've had the best luck with Buffalo so far. Linksys, D-Link, NetGear, even Cisco small business and NetGear business-class have been pathetic crap. My Buffalo router has not been in service over a year, so I cannot honestly speak to longevity. But I can speak to lack of extraordinarily lame firmware bugs ;-)
Cheap home routers tend to have crappy power supplies and inadequate cooling.
Still: I've gone through 3 consumer-grade routers over the last 10 years, and each time I've got a new one it's because the old one isn't up to the job, not because it's failed. They shouldn't need active cooling (they don't use more than about 2W in typical use), and the power supplies seem perfectly adequate for the task to me.
There is always the bathtub...
This is blinging
Use Ubiquity gear, saves you a lot of headaches and is very affordable
Cheap home routers tend to have crappy power supplies and inadequate cooling.
I've an old Asus EEE PC 701, augmented with a USB upstream ethernet, that does perfect service as a router with OpenWRT. Built in UPS (which I presume also conditions the power for the mainboard).
Uptime: 612d 3h 48m 4s, though I'll power it down soon to swap the RAM with a machine more deserving of the 2GB installed in there currently.
In summary, get a cheap old laptop/netbook, and configure it accordingly. A laptop with a broken screen can be had cheap as chips.
Cisco 800 series routers do a great job. Used on ebay for as little as $50. I use an 871 but for most an 851 would do just as well. Very stable with some having over a year of up time. For wireless look at 1200 series AP's. Dual band versions like the 1231AG go for as little as $30 on ebay. Tolerate temps as high as 122 deg F so you can even put them in attics.
I would rather have a used BMW than a new KIA any day. Besides most pure electronics don't wear out the way machanical things do. My old Apple II still works fine, as does my Icom 745 HF rig from the mid 80's.
I've always run with Cisco gear at work, so I figured, why not run with Cisco gear at home? Price is only a concern if you're buying new, and even when most people buy new, they don't buy at list price - they find a gold-certified reseller who can offer them up to 60% off Cisco list prices. Me? I bought most of my kit off eBay.
My own current setup is:
1x Cisco 1841 router with EHWIC-1ADSL for my broadband connection (this card supports ADSL2+)
1x Cisco Aironet AIR-AP1231G-E-K9 for wireless
1x Cisco Catalyst WS-C2940-8TT-S for a switch
The router was £60 off eBay. The WIC was £40 off eBay.
The switch was £40 off eBay. Sure, it's only a 100 Mbit/sec switch, but my internet connection is only around 10 Mbit/sec downstream. Works for me.
The wireless AP was £50 in a clearance sale from PCW Business - it was brand new in box.
If I'd bought an 1801, it'd have had an ADSL2+ interface built-in, but I wanted a router with a couple of WIC slots.
Total - £190. This ticks all the price boxes for me.
In terms of reliability - I've had the AP for a few years now and it's fine; the switch and router were more recent, and haven't let me down either. I've used all of these device types professionally for years (including in dirty warehouses, offshore oil platforms, and in Portakabins running off diesel generators), and have never had one fail yet, so I don't expect one to at home.
The 1841 isn't fanless, so it does make a small amount of noise, but it's not too bad (less noise than my peronal gaming desktop PC, but more noise than my Dell work laptop). It lives in my hallway next to the phone jack, so the noise doesn't annoy anyone. The 2940 switch and 1231 AP are fanless and run silently.
For server stuff, I've got a Raspberry Pi running Samba4 (for Active Directory), Cacti and Observium (for SNMP polling / graphing my Cisco kit), rsyslogd (for syslogging) and am currently pulling my hair out trying to get Horde Webmail to integrate authentication with LDAP. I also want to get a TACACS/RADIUS setup going.
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
Clearly you've never seen a vga connector after someone tried to cram it into a serial port...
30mbps downstream from the ISP and an internal network that should be able to stream 1080p movies to 3 or 4 devices from a media server?
Most enterprises implement a dual product solution. They install a dedicated router and a wireless access point. So get ready to spend $500+ on your solution. The linksys/netgear/asus products are meant to be all in one devices.
If you're looking for an all in one router then look at the Cisco 800 series routers. However, most of the models provide features you do not need like hardware based VPN or QoS, features you most likely do not need for providing you family with access to hulu/youtube etc..
However, I've got an Asus RT-A66U (or Best Buy's name: RT-A66R, same router different name). Easily handles 50Mb down and has 4 GigE ports for LAN traffic. Great range and decent price. Sure the top gets warm/hot but that's because it uses the top metal cover as a large heat sink. I don't put other gear on top of it nor hold it, so it's not a problem. Has solid reviews on Newegg as well.
If you're breaking so many devices you might want to figure out why you're breaking them. Dirty power? Dirty location? (Got a cat/dog?). Don't say "I'm downloading too much..." There's people out there with ancient linksys W54GL's out there and it's not like those were made with "Enterprise Grade Components"
No kidding. I've never had a router die, wireless or not. Ever. In over a decade of 24/7 use. Not one. Zero. I'm currently connected thru a WRT54GL that's been running in my late grandpa's garage since 2005. No climate control of any kind. Same with the old Motorola cablemodem it's connected to. Bought the modem for $10 at a thrift shop and it's still going strong. I've got an older WRT54GS that's only been shelved because the GL was already set up and running when I got the house.
Maybe they make crappy routers these days and we old farts are unaware because we're still running our ancient Linksys gear from an earlier age.
I use Ubiquiti gear at home: their UniFi Pro access point and their EdgeRouter Lite (based on Vyatta) as my router. You can't go wrong.
Exactly this, the old stuff keep's going, the new stuff is junk. Dynalink made an epicly bad adsl2 modem which our isps were giving out. Burnt out one every three months with basic use, hooked up through ups and line surge protectors running at about 10mbits. The things were just that poorly put together with bga chips, inadequate cooling and memory. Got through four a year under warranty.
In comparison I still have some old adsl gear that works, tops out at 8mb but at least it was designed not just badly copied by some clueless Chinese foundry somewhere for the lowest possible cost for the highest possible profit.
The OP is probably blocking their air vents or placing them in closets where they're overheating, or on top of cable boxes/DVRs (which are like ovens.)
Please help metamoderate.
Or a PS/2 connector that the user tried to force in by twisting motion instead of just looking at the end to determine which way to put it.
I once watched in horror as a Post Office clerk did that to her keyboard (nice Cherry switches it looked like) while I was in line. She was forcing and twisting for a good ten seconds before I snapped and stopped her. The pins looked like my daughter's braided hair. I was able to straigten them out by sliding a mechanical pencil without the lead over each pin and carefully bend it back to place.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
What's killing them? FRICTION!
See, he's a hard core gamer, which is also why he buys the faster red ethernet cables instead of the slower blue ones! This causes lots of friction, since he can have a higher packet load through the router, and the poor electronics just get worn out, since he plays about nine hours a day.
He also mounts his routers in the back top shelf of the closets, so that the packets get a gravity assist getting to his computer. Apparently it takes about 1.8ms off his ping time, which is why he consistently beats his friend Charlie in Unreal Tournament.
PS: We all know friction has to be the true answer, since they charge for GB instead of charging for the pipe size; everyone knows this is because routers with packets transiting them have more wear and tear than those same routers using the same amount of power, but not transiting as many packets. It's just common sense!
Bad advice... You're wasting a LOT of power, and you're spending a lot more money, for a device with lesser capabilities.
You not only need to buy the laptop, you're also buying USB ethernet adapters, and a separate network switch to connect to it, while home APs/routers have all that built-in.
Just get something with a USB port that is compatible with DD-WRT or OpenWRT. I know an 8-port D-LINK DIR-632(a) has been available for $40 on Amazon for the past 6 months, which I'm sure ends up FAR cheaper than your solution, and will lower your power bill.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You might want to invest in a newer router anyway.
The thing that limits the old GL's aside from their pathetic RAM and flash space is that they simply don't have enough CPU power. NAT work on the number of connections today's computers and applications require is a lot of work for that aged ~200 MHz CPU. While it speeds up web browsing of course, it's more noticeable when you do more things. As my friend put it when I talked him into upgrading his router from a WRT54G v8 to a $50 dual band TP-Link unit, "I was gaming on my XBox for about an hour, and I came upstairs to find out that my wife had been watching Hulu the entire time. I had no idea..."
They'd never been able to do that before without his game lagging constantly. It wasn't a bandwidth thing either. They have 6 Mb/s DSL.
I recommend this model for the features. It'll run DD-WRT---you might want that too to ensure you have CoDeL support---but the stock firmware works great and has most of the same features.
Here's a screenshot of DD-WRT's system status on the unit. I'm convinced that the version I'm running isn't quite stable.... hence the high load. It's also serving as an AP for me instead of doing NAT work. My NAT is done by a similarly-spec'ed device, a D-Link DIR-825, runs much better and costs about the same, but it only does 300Mbps on the 5 GHz interface. The D-Link might be a better candidate for DD-WRT if you're dead set on using it.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.