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."

Comments

DD-WRT

[donmontalvo]

Get a high end ASUS or Buffalo wireless router and put DD-WRT on it.

Re:DD-WRT

[Skapare]

I have had several failures of Linksys routers in the RF hardware to the point they need to be right next to each other to communicate. The problem was not diagnosed any further since replacing them was less time and money. I got 2-3 years out of them, though, so maybe it's not that bad for $50 each. If I went with a $500 enterprise device, would I get 20-30 yours? Would I even want to (in 10 years it might be obsolete just because new stuff with new features I really want is available). I'm using Buffalo routers with factory defaced DD-WRT now, I might try to load a newer DD-WRT on one or more eventually,

Why would I need to spend so much on enterprise CIsco equipment? I just buy spares now. I have 5 of those Buffalo routers with 2 in use. If hardware dies or the cable gets hit by lightning and the surge gets past the grounding and surge clamp, I just swap out, trash the dead one, and eventually order another spare.

If things changed and I needed the features of enterprise devices at home, I'd get them (and I'd know what I needed when that happens). Until then, cheapness and spares win out.

Re:DD-WRT

[egcagrac0]

I've heard the common cause of that failure is a degraded power supply... the wall warts apparently stop putting out enough current at rated voltage, and the RF range drops to almost nothing.

New wall wart often fixes it.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

UPS

[eric31415927]

Buy a consumer-grade router, but use a UPS to ensure it receives clean power. Dirty power kills these things.

Re:UPS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Agreed, given the repeated failures here, the power supply might be less than wonderful.

It's also worth remembering that "enterprise" equipment is often more about the management features (which no home user is ever likely to need) than the hardware itself. Sometimes the low-end business gear actually turns out to be worse than decent consumer kit. For example, we bought a bunch of Cisco's small business branded equipment for a small office once, paying a premium for it but expecting that the quality and support would be better than some disappointing consumer grade equipment it was replacing. In fact, the NAS turned out to be a rebadged device from another vendor that Cisco never really supported properly, the wireless access point turned out to have buggy firmware that would just drop connections, and so on. It's a mistake we'll never make again.

Re:UPS

[TheGratefulNet]

no, that's not the problem.

as someone who fixes stuff like this, its the bulk filter capacitors (electrolytics) that 99% of the time, fail.

these are the fake chinese caps that are STILL in the market and supply chain. they burst (look at the telltale leakage at the top of the can, near the 'dents' that are supposed to burst if the pressure inside is too high). they can explode or just leak. they might not even show any physical signs of failure but they will fail, all of the, given enough time.

each time I get a failed cisco, netgear, etc; I look at the power inlet area and look for bad caps. I replace every one (the cans) even if they look fine. go to mouser.com or digikey.com and get ones of the same lead spacing (LS) and diameter and height. and of course, the same voltage level. the values are less critical, you can go up or down a bit if based on the stock in the store.

use good name brand parts from japan! those are trustworthy. and buy ONLY from places like mouser, etc. NEVER from ebay, those are guaranteed to be just as fake as the ones from the assembly lines in china, who built the cisco and netgear.

this is the problem. not ups or power spikes but just plain bad parts from china.

every single bad router or switch that got its caps replaced with genuine panasonic or nichicon (my 2 usual goto brands) has been working in excess of 5 years, now. before the replacement, usually a year before the PSU blows its caps.

get low ESR caps, too. ask a EE guy for help.

Re:UPS

[swalve]

Exactly. The only enterprise grade device someone really needs in their house is a UPS. The rest can be whatever is good enough.

Re:Huh?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.

Apple Airport

[uglyduckling]

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.

Re: Huh?

[IrquiM]

There is always the bathtub...

Re:Huh?

[Christian Smith]

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.

Re:Huh?

[sjames]

Clearly you've never seen a vga connector after someone tried to cram it into a serial port...

Re:What's killing them? FRICTION!

[tlambert]

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!

Good advice for the OP, too.

[RulerOf]

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.