Ask Slashdot: Enterprise Level Network Devices For Home Use? 241
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."
Is this a serious question? (Score:2, Insightful)
What has become of Slashdot? The horror.....
DD-WRT (Score:5, Informative)
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I agree, I don't know what is causing this person to have to replace his routers every year, but a high end Asus or Cisco Linksys router can support enterprise loads and functions with DD-WRT. I have had my system running for years with enterprise specific functions. I have also had obsolete WRT54G routers also with enterprise function running in public facilities with huge loads. I don't get the problem this person is having.
-- Mache
Re:DD-WRT (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I ran a molex connector from the PC all this equipment sits on to the back of the computer. Now I plug my router / switch all into a common power rail from a computer PSU. Decent quality computer PSU > cheap shit wallwart and possibly more efficient too. Definitely more efficient on wall plugs.
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How hot can these routers handle? My upstair room can go about 90F degrees during the heat waves. :(
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I got my Buffalo router before patent trolls banned it. Buffalo seems to have paid the 'rogeld and are still making them. I put DD-wrt on it. It's never quit on me.
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OpenWRT, what you want is OpenWRT.
I've just switched after something like 6 or 7 years of pretty painless DD-WRT, and OpenWRT is just better.
Organised configuration files, sensical zoning for the firewalls, a real package manager, a real filesystem rather than overuse of NVRAM.
It feels like something that's been designed rather than hacked together.
Also, OpenWRT used to be harder to configure, but with the LUCI webinterface it really isn't that different from DD-WRT now.
Lastly, the project is actually free,
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WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
probably overheating them (Score:3)
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run more ethernet (Score:2)
if the devices are not laptops / tablets
Routerboard (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Absolutely, no brainer for a mikrotik. I find the 951-2n fine for home though - I have 4 of them, lacking any cables between rooms means I use 5ghz on the backbone, and have a single 2.4ghz network for wireless.
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I've tried to get Routerboards before, but the distribution network in the US is terrible-- no stock, insane lead times, and non responsive. Have you found a good distributor?
What's killing them? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
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Re:What's killing them? FRICTION! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
HP Procurve gear is good (Score:3)
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.
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I use stuff that was designed almost a decade ago. Works just fine for a small business, and it's pretty damn cheap, too. I have zero experience with HP things newer than perhaps 2009.
Apple Airport (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have to agree. I have 3 Airport extremes and 4 Airport Express units in my configuration and they work flawlessly. No failures and the oldest one is 4-5 years old.
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Airport Express? Can they handle more than 15 devices connecting between reboots now?
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I have deployed Airport Express devices on an enterprise network. 2 base stations easily power about 50 devices with RADIUS.
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They are deployed as wired-to-wireless access points for my satellite boxes and other devices that don't have wireless interfaces. They have been in place for years with no issues. I've never had to reboot them...ever.
Re:Apple Airport (Score:4, Interesting)
My complaint with the Airport is the awful management interface, and extremely limited options. Our office unit has been quite reliable over the past 3-4 years though for wifi. The management limitations just force us to put it in the DMZ and VPN into the LAN, which reduces speeds somewhat.
For a home router for a /.er though, I would think the Asus RT66NU would be a pretty good pick: you can install DD-WRT-derived (I think) firmware and get Transmission, OpenVPN, SSH access, etc. It is also 12V, so easy enough to hook up a small battery/power supply/regulator and avoid a UPS. It isn't perfect, but I doubt I would ever go with an Airport again unless I had the same compatibility problems I experienced with my old MacBook Pro.
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I recommend Apple Airport's as well. They are somewhat limited in feature but they are really stable, I have some that are over 10 years old that work perfectly (b/g only).
I also second Buffalo routers. A little more expensive than your el-cheapo home router but stable as hell and comes with DD-WRT.
Asus also makes some good ones but make sure to replace the wall-wart it comes (mine was a 2A) with with a slightly higher wattage/current (I used a 3A but measured usage spikes of 2.2A). The 2A that came in the
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I spent years blaming Comcast for the occasional network hiccups before replacing my Linksys and replacing it with an Airport.
So what did you replace your Linksys with, before replacing it with an Airport? ;)
Sure! (Score:2)
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.
For maximizing reliability (Score:2)
Generic random modem in bridge mode going to a proper linux machine router.
Attach home network to second ethernet interface.
If you want wireless, use the linux machine as a wireless AP using a pci/e card of some description.
Consumer modems are shitty, the more you make them do the quicker they fail, as a pure modem they tend to last a fair bit longer and have less load applied.
Bonus is if/when the modem does die, the rest of the infrastructure still lives.
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I went this route, but I found that a Linux box with a PCI-e WiFi card acting as a base station doesn't give me the same range or signal strength as a dedicated base station.
Maybe I picked a bad card (I have tried several, though). Or maybe I didn't configure something right.
As far as having control over your network, though, you can't beat it.
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I think he is referring to something that can run open firmware. I agree completely with GP's strategy; you can even keep a spare modem around if you need to. Also recommend switching FiOS over to the Ethernet rather than coax at the ONT to avoid the need for a modem.
decent home routers *are* proper linux machines (Score:2)
they're just running on ARM or MIPS, not x86
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While they do technically run linux, the overwhelming majority are still running 2.4 and running on hardware so pathetic it is ridiculous. With the software being unable to be updated (even most dd-wrt hardware pieces are pretty weak)
Buffalo (Score:3)
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 ;-)
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I have a very old Buffalo WBR G54 ; slow wifi, just barely good enough for one wireless video stream - which is good enough. It's lasted over 10 years running OpenWRT after it replaced the Belkin I had before. The wireless transponder on the Belkin failed, but the switch was still working.
I do sometimes get the upgrade itch for something with more grunt, but since I don't have any real issues with it, pragmatism wins.
Ubiquity (Score:2, Informative)
Use Ubiquity gear, saves you a lot of headaches and is very affordable
A router per year? (Score:2)
That's nuts. Nobody hits that many clinkers in a row.
Get yourself a good consumer-grade router and a surge protector, my good Sir/Ma'am/Fido.
Check Point appliance recently released (Score:2)
"All 600 Appliances come standard with 10 x 1Gbps Ethernet ports. For added flexibility and convenience, the wireless version of the 600 Ap
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Maybe it is just luck of the draw, but a restaurant I go to uses the Checkpoint and reliability/range seems disappointing.
My setup (Score:2)
In order to achieve flexibility, I wanted as many components as possible to be in software. I already had 2 large diskless ESX servers connected to a QNAP TS-659 Pro II over NFS and iSCSI, so I updated my physical switch to a Cisco SG-300 20 and I setup link
Cisco 871 (Score:3)
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.
Alternative solution: (Score:2)
Streaming 3-4 1080P videos? How about get off the couch and try spending some time in the real world?
A bit biased here... (Score:2)
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
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I'd second the 1200-series APs from Cisco. Haven't used any of the rest, so no comment there.
Anything with... (Score:2)
Any model of router that has enough RAM and ROM and architecture supported by OpenWRT. It does NOT mean that you will really use OpenWRT but it means that you have at least one alternative firmware and the router is NOT a cheap [Nomina sunt Odiosa] box with minimal functions.
Then, you may experiment with heatsinks and add a ceramic cap in parallel with every electrolytic cap inside if you wish, replace a cheap [Nomina sunt Odiosa] power source with UPS and do what you want.
If your box is a supermegaextrapro
Enterprise routers? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"
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Or dedicated everythings - a router, a switch, and an AP
Middle of the road (Score:2)
Okay, there are options besides "consumer" and "enterprise." There are network devices for small offices and medium businesses. You don't need a Cisco 6900-series chassis to be more reliable than a dogshit consumer router. Cisco is a bit more filled-out in this range (I run some of this class of gear at home myself, and am happy). I have a Gig-E backbone and use a business-class WAP for wireless. It's not a wifi router mind you...no NAT, no switchports, no WPS. And I like it that way, because it allow
My setup (Score:2)
I also had issues regarding consumer grade routers (largely that they liked to slow down and die and crash horrifically), so I took a slightly different approach.
I'm using a small Mini-ITX server, using an Intel D525, 4GB of memory, and a 60GB SSD for ClearOS / Squid Proxy (does wonders for WoW Updates, actually...)
That handles all outbound traffic. That's hooked up to a nice 16-port gigabit switch, and I run cables for as many things as I possibly can. There's about 30 different wifi signals I can hit righ
Ubiquiti gear (Score:2)
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.
YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG (Score:2)
you are killing a router once a year under normal use? my god man blow the dust off of it once in a while and unbury it from behind the stack of shit. My old router lasted 6 years and the only reason I got rid of it is because my internet service increased to the point where it became a bottleneck. My parent still have their linksys from 2004 and this yuts cant keep one going for a year?
NetGear! (Score:2)
The key to consumer based gear (Score:2)
Enterprise or prosumer? (Score:2)
Honestly, if you're talking about real Cisco boxes, and the like, no. You probably don't need that.
Still, it might not hurt to step up to the prosumer level devices.
I got sick of the consumer crap treadmill. I have everything on UPS with a monster surge suppression unit, yet I had units of all kinds dying, or turning out to be useless. Finally, I had two $179 "consumer" routers die on me back to back in the middle of patching (shipping settings were SEVERELY broken and needed to be patched to be usable).
Prosumer isn't good enough. (Score:2)
As others have mentioned, the sweet spot is competitors for the corporate space, just a few notches below Cisco. HP, Ubiquity, Ruckus, they put out enterprise grade hardware that is almost affordable used.
Prosumer gear just isn't built to last, it's built to maximize feature lists while minimizing cost. Even if many of you haven't had your networking gear go down on you at your home, you are the lucky ones. I have had a litany of routers and firmwares and I have watched a few small-medium businesses try
Get A UPS (Score:2)
If your wireless gear is dying rapidly, then I suggest putting them being a good UPS. It sounds more like a power supply problem than anything else. APC sells excellent UPS's around the $200 range.
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Cheap home routers tend to have crappy power supplies and inadequate cooling.
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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.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 a
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Bad advice... You're wasting a LOT of power, and you're spending a lot more money, for a device with lesser capabilities.
It's possible that GP has needs that aren't met by a cheap router. Maybe he does filtering, or operates a proxy, or transparent caching? Maybe he does fancy traffic analysis? Maybe he does complicated multi-level QoS? Maybe he has a landing page for open wireless that is separate from his encrypted wireless/LAN? Maybe he wants to be able to handle a large number of connection states that crashes lesser devices with not enough RAM? A least that's why I use a small netbook instead of one of the many che
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Filtering is no problem. I was managing extremely large, very aggressive firewall rules on full 100Mbps connection with a 200MHz Pentium 2 processors, many years ago.
Proxies don't require much CPU power at all, unless we're talking about man-in-the-middle SSL. And you can do all the caching you want if you add storage via the included USB port.
I would expect
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Way too much power usage. Unless you run something like a SIP server on something that actually requires so much hardware, you can shrink that a lot.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly you've never seen a vga connector after someone tried to cram it into a serial port...
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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 careful
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No, but I've seen the results of someone plugging in a USB-A connector upside down. What a horrible, horrible design.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 badl
Good advice for the OP, too. (Score:5, Informative)
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, [amazon.com] "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 [amazon.com] 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 [imgur.com] 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 [imgur.com] and costs about the same, [amazon.com] 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.
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UPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy a consumer-grade router, but use a UPS to ensure it receives clean power. Dirty power kills these things.
Re:UPS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Totally agree. We bough a Cisco AP and it was a buggy piece of shit that only worked,tolerably well after a firmware update released a year after we purchased it. Even then it ran incredibly hot, and seemed to randomly flake out and clients would lose connectivity. It was an overpriced hunk of junk.
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I've used a Cisco AP1232AG for a long time now, and it's been the most reliable piece of wireless kit I've ever used. What series of AP was giving you issues?
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Where's "here"?
I find it strange to hear about network equipment dieing after only a year. I've had the same WNR3500L for four years now, and added an Asus RT-N16 two years ago because I needed a second AP to provide for more coverage when I moved into a larger house. Both still work great, and I haven't had to baby them or anything.
Unless by "here" you mean there is some kind of California thing where power outages damage equipment? I'm in Phoenix Arizona - we use nuclear and hydro (largest nuclear plant i
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FWIW, I'm in the UK, in an area where the power supply is less than brilliant. We don't get many complete outages, but moderate surges and brown-outs seem to be happening all the time if the behaviour of a UPS is to be believed.
The working life of our electronic devices was surprisingly short across the board for the first few years after we moved here, with many formerly reliable devices all failing within a couple of years of the move, including (coincidentally or otherwise) multiple consumer-grade broadb
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yeah..
i got a wireless router that's.. something like 7 years old? some other network gear that's 10+ year old bargain bin stuff.
it never breaks. probably what's broken in his equipment is some protection diode or the psu.
Re:UPS (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Of course that may
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Absolutely. I have a WRT plugged in to an old UPS that's been running for years.
Re:UPS (Score:5, Insightful)
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I call BS... "Dirty power" can be a serious problem for refrigerators and air conditioners containing AC motors, but is meaningless for electronics powered by a switching power supply with a 5-volt output. You can power a router with a 120-volt sine wave or a 200-volt scribble wave, and the semiconductors in the router will still see 5-volts.
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I... what? Never ever worked with an ISP using MikroTik routers. Or are you talking about small like collage student ISPs or something?
Presumably, college students know the difference between a collage and a college, so that's one thing they have over you.
I live in bumfuck nowhere and I used to be served by a small local WISP who used Mikrotik routerboards. They were bought out by a larger WISP which uses some kind of CDMA shit that can't handle many small frames, so I'm not allowed to use bittorrent even for legitimate uses. The WiFi-based stuff using the routerboards was far better from my POV.
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Cisco 871 here and a C2950-24 switch. The 3550 is great if you want the layer 3 capabilities but remember it's power requirements as are around 80 watts. The 2950 uses only around 18 and isn't as noisy.
Failures much lass frequent. In fact I buy these for customers on ebay for around $50. Zero failures on the 871 routers and only one on the C2950.
Remember if it isn't running IOS it isn't real Cisco gear. Never mind the Linksys crap they bought and put there name on. Big mistake that even they now realize as
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Remember if it isn't running IOS it isn't real Cisco gear. Never mind the Linksys crap they bought and put there name on. Big mistake that even they now realize as they are dumping Linksys.
Exactly, Linksys gear was bottom-of-the-barrel before Cisco bought it. The quality went up a little bit, but it just isn't made to the same spec that let's Cisco charge an arm and a leg for enterprise networking gear.
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And all this will cost you 3-4 times more and take 3-4 times more place than a specialized device. Also, it will have 3 times more glitches that you will never be able to catch: the simple ADSL modem has NO RAM and ROM for alternative firmware. Then, TL-WR702N has only 2 MB flash. It means that you also cannot use any alternative firmware (it needs at least 4). You will be unable to use any functions that you cannot migrate from TL-WR to Atom.
Re: Long live openwrt (Score:2)
My WRT54G is a Rev. 1 model. Tomato, running strong. I use it as a secondary these days, with an Asus RT-N16 as primary (for gigabit throughput on the LAN). Also have a Rev. 4 set up, currently using it as an emergency backup should either of the others crap out on me.
The Rev 1 was picked up for $1 at a yard sale, the Rev 4 was a freebie from a friend. Never underestimate the possibilities older hardware can offer if you know how to dump the stock firmware.
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Can you elaborate? Do you mean Best-Buy off the shelf or direct-from-HP off the shelf?