9 ms·

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Goo

by ok_dad 5y ago

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Google wifi thing but I'd rather pay a few hundred than use that for 10 bucks a month to rent that thing, and I don't trust Google. Edit: Thanks for all the answers, from me and anyone else who was looking! I have some good ideas from the below comments and hopefully this thread helps some others as well.

comeonseriously 5y ago
I use an Edgerouter-x with an eap225 AP located centrally. I have not noticed any spying.
- lephty 5y ago
  +1 for the TP-Link EAP225 and its brethren (they have a cloud management portal, but with just a handful of units they can be managed individually or via self-hosted management server). I use mine with a Mikrotik RB4011. A very stable and reliable combination.
bigyellow 5y ago
PC Engines with OpenBSD or Debian Linux. 100% open source hardware, firmware and software, not this closed-source "RouterOS" which is probably bugged.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Yes, this is easily superior to most options; Debian/OpenBSD/whatever is far more trustworthy than any commercial offering (and many noncommercial options), and hostapd isn't especially hard to set up - a bit of effort up front and then you can just sit on it for years with no more maintenance than installing updates (and even that can be automated with unattended upgrades in Debian). The result is a capable little box that will get security updates indefinitely and which only serves your interests.
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    I also use PC Engines Alix with Debian as home router and it is in many ways superior to commercial options, but quality of wifi drivers in Linux is long-term issue. Also note that in unpatched hostapd channel bonding (40MHz and more channels) does not really work. There is a check whether neighboring channel is crowded (which always is due to overcrowded spectrum) that disables channel bonding. AFAIK Openwrt has patch that allows to override this check, but Debian does not. As a result, i get consistently higher wifi speeds from commercial wifi APs than from my Alix router.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  I tend to use OpenWRT on Mikrotik devices, but I used a board from PC Engines, and I was was impressed by it. The hardware is very standard, and their support was good. I had a question about the max power the mini PCI port could supply. I got an answer and info on a change I can make that adds a capacitor to help in this scenario.
- _joel 5y ago
  Lovely little systems. Used them to build VPN gateways and for our OOB access at POPs etc.
- ahepp 5y ago
  I agree that this is what I would want to use, but doesn't the lack of any kind of specialized switching hardware make it uncompetitive in terms of price/power consumption/speed? I have on order a mikrotik rb5009UG+S+, which has nine gigabit ethernet ports, one 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, and a 10g sfp+ cage. It has zero fans and benchmarks show it capable of 10 gigabit routing. It costs less than $200. I love vyos, and I would definitely prefer an open source router. But people I talk to love their mikrotik products. It doesn't seem like the old ones are being abandoned.
djanogo 5y ago
Unify Dream Machine, it's constantly out of stock, you have to keep checking Ubiquiti website to get it. It has cloud access which is used by app to monitor or control it from outside of your house, but you can disable it.
- bigyellow 5y ago
  > It has cloud access which is used by app to monitor or control it from outside of your house, but you can disable it. Nope, don't trust them to do that after https://community.ui.com/questions/Ubiquiti-ignoring-auto-update-settings-and-using-back-doors-into-our-Protect-systems-is-at-a-minimu/e60f39ce-c3ae-4cb0-9079-0304c467a40b https://community.ui.com/questions/Ubiquiti-ignoring-auto-up...
  - djanogo 5y ago
    Having owned UDM for over a year with auto update off, they never pushed any forced update, I always do it manually every few months. Based on number of updates[1] that they push I can totally give them benefit of doubt that it was a bug. They have dozens of products which they update constantly, picking one bug at one time as malice and blacklisting a company is not correct. If you go that route you won't have any company left to buy from. [1]https://community.ui.com/releases https://community.ui.com/releases
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    You don't need it. You can disable the cloud access starting with the latest firmware.
- nullwarp 5y ago
  We use UDM's at work and I really feel like they are half baked products at best. I'm really not a fan and we've stopped using them completely in new installations because of it and have gone back to MikroTik hardware which has never given us issues. I also just find the UDMs interface an absolute shit show to navigate and find things.
  - 5y ago
willis936 5y ago
I bought a used Ruckus R610 on ebay for a modest $160 (not including power adapter). I am extremely happy with the hardware performance and the stability and options of the Unleashed firmware. It says it supports a gateway mode, but as a power user I want a bit more control than what I would expect a WAP to offer. I use an EdgeRouter-4 running whatever the latest official release is. Having separate boxes grants me freedom to do things like mess with Wi-Fi settings while my SO watches a show on Apple TV connected via Ethernet. It's the little things. I often think of a pfSense build, but then I remember how happy I am with the performance and efficiency of a dedicated box.
- gonzo 5y ago
  I own Netgate and run R610s at work and at home, if that says anything.
- wcfields 5y ago
  Before Ubiquiti turned into a garbage fire my go to recommendation for power/performance/budget was used Ruckus APs and pfSense router.
- c0nsumer 5y ago
  FWIW, I do OPNsense on a dedicated box (Protectli FW4B) and then an R610 for wireless, with an eBay special EOL'd Brocade switch in the middle. A dumber switch would be just fine, but I wanted something with 802.1at POE and good VLAN support because I like to break things up a bit. OPNsense is darned handy, and I like that it does more than an EdgeRouter would, like terminate a Wireguard VPN. The R610 works wonderfully, and the switch... well... it's a switch. Once configured it's kinda transparent. Moving houses soon, so I got a second R610 to fill in signal on what I perceive will be dead spots due to plaster+lathe construction, and in testing thus far it all seems to Just Work. And like you appreciate, since it's all modular it's a lot easier to maintain than the UniFi stuff when things go sideways. Very, very happy with this setup.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    > I do OPNsense on a dedicated box (Protectli FW4B) Interesting, thanks. Looks similar to one I'm considering to purchase when I'm moving next year. I'd be using OpnSense too. https://www.ipu-system.de/index.html https://www.ipu-system.de/index.html
dprice1 5y ago
I used to work on a product for secure small-biz Wifi, and so dogfooded my own product in my house. When that was over and I took that out of my house, I had my eyes on Ubiquiti, and it is an impressive ecosystem. But as others have said, it's out of stock all the time, and Ubiqiti are teasing people right now with their next-gen product which is available but also unobtainable. Eventually I picked the Asus ZenWifi system, and honestly it works great (I have no affiliation with Asus). There's no cloud account to create when you install it. The app is acceptable. There are various security things you can turn on which seem to require cloud assistance, but the core product seems to work very nicely. Any time you try to turn on something which might cause the system to share extra data, a popup appears to explain that to you. It's so powerful, Wifi-wise, that I bought three nodes and only deployed two. I use it with Ethernet backhaul but it has a dedicated radio for wireless backhaul. It has ethernet LAN ports on each node, and each node is identical to every other node (i.e. there is no "base" and "satellite"). I went from spotty Wifi throughout my 2,000 sq ft house to very strong Wifi throughout. I wrung my hands for a long time because I gave up VLANs and some other things I wanted, and then said the heck with it.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Ubiquiti seems to have turned into a complete shit-show in the last five years.
  - nullwarp 5y ago
    Yeah easily the most annoying hardware we have to manage to the point where we will no longer use it.
    - InTheArena 5y ago
      Its gotten much much better over the last six months or so. The transition to generic linux for their router line was rough, but the worst seems to be over.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Subscriptions are coming I bet. The whole ui.com account thing where they force you to create an account and link new devices like the UDM Pro are the writing on the wall IMO. They back-peddled on adding it to the v2 firmware of Cloud Key's IIRC, but the end game is likely to get everyone paying per device per month. The last time they had a pay per device per month service it started at $1/device/month and then they bumped it to $10/device/month. Somehow they thought the one time cost of a device should become an annual cost and that people would adopt it. Obviously that flopped. Now think of the same scenario, but everyone's gotten complacent and are getting dependent on their devices that are linked back to ui.com. They might not blatantly flip the switch, but now that they have a hook for licensing checks they can start shifting development so new features are licensed for a monthly fee rather than getting them free forever when you buy a device. IMO as soon as the all-in-one devices that perform management (ex: UDM Pro) while being linked to a ui.com account get enough adoption they'll shift to some kind of feature licensing or simply release new devices / revisions that require "cloud licensing" or something similar. They're also very flippant when it comes to breaking devices in a way that prevents a connection to the controller. They think SSHing into broken devices to fix them is reasonable and it's not if you have to deal with many sites / devices.
60Vhipx7b4JL 5y ago
how about openwrt/openwisp?
- ctoth 5y ago
  As far as I understand, no Wi-Fi 6 routers actually run Openwrt. The only way to get somewhat open software on your Wi-fi 6 or newer device is to use Merlin's fork of Asuswrt. Merlin is pretty big on not making large modifications though, so, for instance, it's very difficult to get Docker running on the device because the default Kernel doesn't ship with a lot of necessary modules. There are some nice apps that use the router directly like Diversion but I would really love a little device that managed everything from VLAN tagging to running little docker appliances and also provided a fast modern AP. Imagine an app store where the moderate power user could click and install apps on their router that all lived in little containers.
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    > As far as I understand, no Wi-Fi 6 routers actually run Openwrt. This is no longer the case. Some devices (albeit not too many) now have working 802.11ax [0]. I know most about the Linksys E8450, which does require a newer snapshot of OpenWRT (it's not yet in a stable release). [0] https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi
- icybox 5y ago
  I'm running Netgear N600 / WNDR3800 with OpenWRT since day one. So if you (can) plan for OS before buying, you can dodge a bullet when $VENDOR stops giving f*cks. That particular box has been released in 2011! Mikrotik is good enough (tm) probably, but it's licensed/closed-source. bcantrill once mentioned that "Infrastructure software should be open-source" and I'm adhering to this mantra for 10 years now. Dodged many bullets coming my way ... (i.e. if you want to buy something, can you plan for linux/BSD OS when vendor just doesn't care anymore?) Would like to hear ideas about Apple's airports running custom NetBSD ... are you guys still running those as edge/internet routers with wifi or have you pushed them to the inside of the network and promoted some other box to the firewall role? I'm kinda stuck in the conundrum "it's unix with PF, it can handle itself" and "it's does not get updates anymore".
dont__panic 5y ago
Hot take: All routers completely suck right now, and most of them are built to spy on your network at worst and accidentally expose you to cyberattacks at best. There are two choices, the way I see it: 1. Invest in a decent router (probably $150-200 at least) and throw openwrt on it. You'll need something with serious CPU beef because openwrt relies more on software than hardware, and most routers use hardware for QoS etc., hence the price tag. You'll also need to actually understand the multitude of settings offered by openwrt if you care at all about security or performance -- this is nontrivial if you aren't already a network engineer. 2. Buy a used Apple Airport router. The last generation support AC wifi, which is... basically as fast as the best things out there right now, barring wifi 6E. On the plus side: this comes with mostly sane defaults and good performance, I easily get 600+ mbps up/down on my gigabit internet. On the downside... I think you can only configure airport routers through macOS (and a mostly-dead iOS app), and they don't let you configure all the settings you might want. A fair tradeoff for good, non-footgun defaults IMO, but YMMV. There's also the third option of creating some bespoke raspberry pi + wifi hardware solution for yourself, but that's likely to get you punched by your flatmates when it inevitably reboots incorrectly during a power outage or overheats or whatever and suddenly you need to spend 2 hours debugging problems without a working wireless connection and everyone else is pissed they can't use the internet. Unless, of course, you're a brilliant network engineer who would never make a silly mistake or have a bug in their custom router solution. Which I guess is why most people use Google or Amazon spyware for internet in their homes.
- ok_dad 5y ago
  Thanks for that, it is what I figured. I have a really old, nice, router running one of the WRT-like OSes and I really, really don't want to do that anymore. I have a small family and do not want to mess with this stuff. I might just bite the bullet and hook up a few more of the Google routers. I hate using Google, and don't trust them, but I probably trust them more than most other brands in this space. Also, I can't argue that I don't get good performance from their stuff. The only problem is, if I turn off the cloud features with this thing, I can't even do port forwarding or anything! Who the F puts that behind a cloud? Anyways, thanks for the answer.
InTheArena 5y ago
If you can get your hands on it - Check out the pre-release Unifi Dream Router. PoE (to drive other AP), Gateway and built in AP all in one.
ksec 5y ago
It is a real shame Apple stopped their AirPort Express. But if you could still get one 2nd hand it is great.
- InTheArena 5y ago
  I know it's "in" to shit on ubiqitui right now - but the new Ubiquti Dream Router and the older Unifi Dream Machine are the best spiritual successor I have seen to this device. The UDM comes out of the box with the switch and AP, which performas well, while the UDR also has PoE switches and WIFI 6 in case you want to run other APs or security cameras. And before anyone else jumps in with old information,as of the latest firmware, it does not require cloud access. And the PPoE performance problem has been fixed. It was a bumpy transition for a bit because they moved off of Vyatta to generic Linux for the routers.
darkr 5y ago
Not sure if it passes the “don’t have to screw with” test (as configuration generally requires a decent level of networking knowledge), but I’m quite happy with Mikrotik Audience access points/routers.
tw04 5y ago
Synology has been far and away the best I've deployed for "friends and family". I've not received a single phone call for support and it's the first wifi product I can say that about. They also are introducing full VLAN support in DSM 1.3 which should be out soon if you're a power user. Honestly if they supported PoE for their extenders I probably would have switched out to it. The extenders will mesh wired or wireless which is nice.
- nrclark 5y ago
  Do their products have much in the way of phone-home / cloud access?
  - tw04 5y ago
    They have a reverse tunnel that you can enable for remote access, but you can disable it. https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/help/SRM/NetworkCenter/internet_quickconnect_ddns?version= https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/help/SRM/NetworkCenter... I personally like that because I can safely remotely access the routers I've deployed for others if I ever have a reason to. They just need to check a box to turn it on or off in the GUI. They also have an "experience improvement" program that sends home telemetry that can also be disabled. As far as I know there's no "phone home" that you can't turn off if you don't want it.
    - aborsy 5y ago
      QuickConnect makes your NAS wide open to internet. It does so using UPnP or a relay station in a synology data center. Not only Stnology will likely have access to users data at the relay station (see change of certificate!), DSM login page will be open to anyone on internet (you can try random usernames on https://quickconnect.to/ https://quickconnect.to/ and connect to people’s NASes). Maybe for routers it’s different, but this service is not secure for NAS.
djhworld 5y ago
I've been building a little TP-Link Omada setup for my home. There is a cloud option for the controller software or you can buy the hardware controller (or...run it yourself) Was going to go all in on Ubiquiti but was put off when reading about the reliability issues, plus was way more expensive. Pleased with my router + access point + PoE switch + hardware controller :)
imiric 5y ago
I'm currently in the process of moving my home network from Ubiquiti to an open solution with a few Mikrotik RBM11Gs to serve as APs, and will probably also replace my Netgate SG-3100 with pfSense with likely a PC Engines machine. All will probably be running OpenWrt, though if that's too limiting / buggy, I'll just use plain Linux or OpenBSD on them. The major benefit of this setup is that you don't depend on some manufacturer for updates. Given Ubiquiti's and Netgate's recently hostile actions towards users and open source, this provides a great peace of mind. The other benefit is that you're free to upgrade your hardware as needed, which particularly for WiFi cards is great to have. Right now I'm sticking with WiFi 5 because of the costs, but in the future upgrading to 6E would just be a matter of changing the cards (assuming they're supported by the OS). Speaking of cards, I went with Compex WLE1216V5-20, which have an Atheros chip and are thus much better supported on Linux than Broadcom, etc.
- ericd 5y ago
  I've been considering replacing my EdgeRouter with a pfsense box (probably the Netgate 6100), have you been dissatisfied with your Netgate?
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    Unless something radical has changed in the last half year or so, pfSense will be a giant PITA if you have "residential" IPv6. That is, anything but a completely static prefix.
    - ericd 5y ago
      Oh interesting, thanks for the heads up.
    - technofiend 5y ago
      I am unhappy with pfsense's inability to push gigabit traffic on my hardware, but IPV6 works fine for me. I'd be curious what isp you have and what your issue is.
cycomanic 5y ago
I heard good things about PCengines APU products (e.g. see here https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/apu3d4-open-source-router https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/apu3d4-open-source-r... I'm not affiliated). You essentially run openwrt or pfsense on your own hardware. Alternatively, many people are now putting pfsense/opnsense on their own hardware. In particular thin-clients are very capable and some can be easily be retrofitted with multiple ethernet ports (however, prices have gone up significantly for some of these over the last year). The one thing you need to be careful with is wifi hardware compatibility. Some instructions here: https://boratory.net/pfsense-firewall-futro-s900/ https://boratory.net/pfsense-firewall-futro-s900/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?resources/introduction-to-the-hp-t730-thin-client-the-little-box-that-could.41/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?resources/introduc...
- ValentineC 5y ago
  > The one thing you need to be careful with is wifi hardware compatibility. I'd suggest using old consumer routers as access points.
davidandgoliath 5y ago
Ubiquiti amplifi hd. I use the mesh stuff.
fifteenforty 5y ago
Have you heard of Fritz!box from AVM? That’s what I have setup for a few friends, with good success. Personally I use a Mikrotik hap ac 3 in my apartment. They have a ‘mesh’ product in the Audience line.
sam_lowry_ 5y ago
I am happy with hAP ac2 running OpenWRT. RouterOS is a bit clunky for a Linux user. They kind of mimick Cisco UX, which is a big mess for everyone except professional network engineers.

by ok_dad 5y ago

comeonseriously 5y ago

I use an Edgerouter-x with an eap225 AP located centrally. I have not noticed any spying.

lephty 5y ago
+1 for the TP-Link EAP225 and its brethren (they have a cloud management portal, but with just a handful of units they can be managed individually or via self-hosted management server). I use mine with a Mikrotik RB4011. A very stable and reliable combination.

bigyellow 5y ago

PC Engines with OpenBSD or Debian Linux. 100% open source hardware, firmware and software, not this closed-source "RouterOS" which is probably bugged.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Yes, this is easily superior to most options; Debian/OpenBSD/whatever is far more trustworthy than any commercial offering (and many noncommercial options), and hostapd isn't especially hard to set up - a bit of effort up front and then you can just sit on it for years with no more maintenance than installing updates (and even that can be automated with unattended upgrades in Debian). The result is a capable little box that will get security updates indefinitely and which only serves your interests.
- zajio1am 5y ago
  I also use PC Engines Alix with Debian as home router and it is in many ways superior to commercial options, but quality of wifi drivers in Linux is long-term issue. Also note that in unpatched hostapd channel bonding (40MHz and more channels) does not really work. There is a check whether neighboring channel is crowded (which always is due to overcrowded spectrum) that disables channel bonding. AFAIK Openwrt has patch that allows to override this check, but Debian does not. As a result, i get consistently higher wifi speeds from commercial wifi APs than from my Alix router.
dehrmann 5y ago
I tend to use OpenWRT on Mikrotik devices, but I used a board from PC Engines, and I was was impressed by it. The hardware is very standard, and their support was good. I had a question about the max power the mini PCI port could supply. I got an answer and info on a change I can make that adds a capacitor to help in this scenario.
_joel 5y ago
Lovely little systems. Used them to build VPN gateways and for our OOB access at POPs etc.
ahepp 5y ago
I agree that this is what I would want to use, but doesn't the lack of any kind of specialized switching hardware make it uncompetitive in terms of price/power consumption/speed? I have on order a mikrotik rb5009UG+S+, which has nine gigabit ethernet ports, one 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, and a 10g sfp+ cage. It has zero fans and benchmarks show it capable of 10 gigabit routing. It costs less than $200. I love vyos, and I would definitely prefer an open source router. But people I talk to love their mikrotik products. It doesn't seem like the old ones are being abandoned.

djanogo 5y ago

Unify Dream Machine, it's constantly out of stock, you have to keep checking Ubiquiti website to get it. It has cloud access which is used by app to monitor or control it from outside of your house, but you can disable it.

bigyellow 5y ago
> It has cloud access which is used by app to monitor or control it from outside of your house, but you can disable it. Nope, don't trust them to do that after https://community.ui.com/questions/Ubiquiti-ignoring-auto-update-settings-and-using-back-doors-into-our-Protect-systems-is-at-a-minimu/e60f39ce-c3ae-4cb0-9079-0304c467a40b https://community.ui.com/questions/Ubiquiti-ignoring-auto-up...
- djanogo 5y ago
  Having owned UDM for over a year with auto update off, they never pushed any forced update, I always do it manually every few months. Based on number of updates[1] that they push I can totally give them benefit of doubt that it was a bug. They have dozens of products which they update constantly, picking one bug at one time as malice and blacklisting a company is not correct. If you go that route you won't have any company left to buy from. [1]https://community.ui.com/releases https://community.ui.com/releases
- InTheArena 5y ago
  You don't need it. You can disable the cloud access starting with the latest firmware.
nullwarp 5y ago
We use UDM's at work and I really feel like they are half baked products at best. I'm really not a fan and we've stopped using them completely in new installations because of it and have gone back to MikroTik hardware which has never given us issues. I also just find the UDMs interface an absolute shit show to navigate and find things.
- 5y ago

willis936 5y ago

I bought a used Ruckus R610 on ebay for a modest $160 (not including power adapter). I am extremely happy with the hardware performance and the stability and options of the Unleashed firmware. It says it supports a gateway mode, but as a power user I want a bit more control than what I would expect a WAP to offer. I use an EdgeRouter-4 running whatever the latest official release is. Having separate boxes grants me freedom to do things like mess with Wi-Fi settings while my SO watches a show on Apple TV connected via Ethernet. It's the little things. I often think of a pfSense build, but then I remember how happy I am with the performance and efficiency of a dedicated box.

gonzo 5y ago
I own Netgate and run R610s at work and at home, if that says anything.
wcfields 5y ago
Before Ubiquiti turned into a garbage fire my go to recommendation for power/performance/budget was used Ruckus APs and pfSense router.
c0nsumer 5y ago
FWIW, I do OPNsense on a dedicated box (Protectli FW4B) and then an R610 for wireless, with an eBay special EOL'd Brocade switch in the middle. A dumber switch would be just fine, but I wanted something with 802.1at POE and good VLAN support because I like to break things up a bit. OPNsense is darned handy, and I like that it does more than an EdgeRouter would, like terminate a Wireguard VPN. The R610 works wonderfully, and the switch... well... it's a switch. Once configured it's kinda transparent. Moving houses soon, so I got a second R610 to fill in signal on what I perceive will be dead spots due to plaster+lathe construction, and in testing thus far it all seems to Just Work. And like you appreciate, since it's all modular it's a lot easier to maintain than the UniFi stuff when things go sideways. Very, very happy with this setup.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  > I do OPNsense on a dedicated box (Protectli FW4B) Interesting, thanks. Looks similar to one I'm considering to purchase when I'm moving next year. I'd be using OpnSense too. https://www.ipu-system.de/index.html https://www.ipu-system.de/index.html

dprice1 5y ago

I used to work on a product for secure small-biz Wifi, and so dogfooded my own product in my house. When that was over and I took that out of my house, I had my eyes on Ubiquiti, and it is an impressive ecosystem. But as others have said, it's out of stock all the time, and Ubiqiti are teasing people right now with their next-gen product which is available but also unobtainable. Eventually I picked the Asus ZenWifi system, and honestly it works great (I have no affiliation with Asus). There's no cloud account to create when you install it. The app is acceptable. There are various security things you can turn on which seem to require cloud assistance, but the core product seems to work very nicely. Any time you try to turn on something which might cause the system to share extra data, a popup appears to explain that to you. It's so powerful, Wifi-wise, that I bought three nodes and only deployed two. I use it with Ethernet backhaul but it has a dedicated radio for wireless backhaul. It has ethernet LAN ports on each node, and each node is identical to every other node (i.e. there is no "base" and "satellite"). I went from spotty Wifi throughout my 2,000 sq ft house to very strong Wifi throughout. I wrung my hands for a long time because I gave up VLANs and some other things I wanted, and then said the heck with it.

formerly_proven 5y ago
Ubiquiti seems to have turned into a complete shit-show in the last five years.
- nullwarp 5y ago
  Yeah easily the most annoying hardware we have to manage to the point where we will no longer use it.
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    Its gotten much much better over the last six months or so. The transition to generic linux for their router line was rough, but the worst seems to be over.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Subscriptions are coming I bet. The whole ui.com account thing where they force you to create an account and link new devices like the UDM Pro are the writing on the wall IMO. They back-peddled on adding it to the v2 firmware of Cloud Key's IIRC, but the end game is likely to get everyone paying per device per month. The last time they had a pay per device per month service it started at $1/device/month and then they bumped it to $10/device/month. Somehow they thought the one time cost of a device should become an annual cost and that people would adopt it. Obviously that flopped. Now think of the same scenario, but everyone's gotten complacent and are getting dependent on their devices that are linked back to ui.com. They might not blatantly flip the switch, but now that they have a hook for licensing checks they can start shifting development so new features are licensed for a monthly fee rather than getting them free forever when you buy a device. IMO as soon as the all-in-one devices that perform management (ex: UDM Pro) while being linked to a ui.com account get enough adoption they'll shift to some kind of feature licensing or simply release new devices / revisions that require "cloud licensing" or something similar. They're also very flippant when it comes to breaking devices in a way that prevents a connection to the controller. They think SSHing into broken devices to fix them is reasonable and it's not if you have to deal with many sites / devices.

60Vhipx7b4JL 5y ago

how about openwrt/openwisp?

ctoth 5y ago
As far as I understand, no Wi-Fi 6 routers actually run Openwrt. The only way to get somewhat open software on your Wi-fi 6 or newer device is to use Merlin's fork of Asuswrt. Merlin is pretty big on not making large modifications though, so, for instance, it's very difficult to get Docker running on the device because the default Kernel doesn't ship with a lot of necessary modules. There are some nice apps that use the router directly like Diversion but I would really love a little device that managed everything from VLAN tagging to running little docker appliances and also provided a fast modern AP. Imagine an app store where the moderate power user could click and install apps on their router that all lived in little containers.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  > As far as I understand, no Wi-Fi 6 routers actually run Openwrt. This is no longer the case. Some devices (albeit not too many) now have working 802.11ax [0]. I know most about the Linksys E8450, which does require a newer snapshot of OpenWRT (it's not yet in a stable release). [0] https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi
icybox 5y ago
I'm running Netgear N600 / WNDR3800 with OpenWRT since day one. So if you (can) plan for OS before buying, you can dodge a bullet when $VENDOR stops giving f*cks. That particular box has been released in 2011! Mikrotik is good enough (tm) probably, but it's licensed/closed-source. bcantrill once mentioned that "Infrastructure software should be open-source" and I'm adhering to this mantra for 10 years now. Dodged many bullets coming my way ... (i.e. if you want to buy something, can you plan for linux/BSD OS when vendor just doesn't care anymore?) Would like to hear ideas about Apple's airports running custom NetBSD ... are you guys still running those as edge/internet routers with wifi or have you pushed them to the inside of the network and promoted some other box to the firewall role? I'm kinda stuck in the conundrum "it's unix with PF, it can handle itself" and "it's does not get updates anymore".

dont__panic 5y ago

Hot take: All routers completely suck right now, and most of them are built to spy on your network at worst and accidentally expose you to cyberattacks at best. There are two choices, the way I see it: 1. Invest in a decent router (probably $150-200 at least) and throw openwrt on it. You'll need something with serious CPU beef because openwrt relies more on software than hardware, and most routers use hardware for QoS etc., hence the price tag. You'll also need to actually understand the multitude of settings offered by openwrt if you care at all about security or performance -- this is nontrivial if you aren't already a network engineer. 2. Buy a used Apple Airport router. The last generation support AC wifi, which is... basically as fast as the best things out there right now, barring wifi 6E. On the plus side: this comes with mostly sane defaults and good performance, I easily get 600+ mbps up/down on my gigabit internet. On the downside... I think you can only configure airport routers through macOS (and a mostly-dead iOS app), and they don't let you configure all the settings you might want. A fair tradeoff for good, non-footgun defaults IMO, but YMMV. There's also the third option of creating some bespoke raspberry pi + wifi hardware solution for yourself, but that's likely to get you punched by your flatmates when it inevitably reboots incorrectly during a power outage or overheats or whatever and suddenly you need to spend 2 hours debugging problems without a working wireless connection and everyone else is pissed they can't use the internet. Unless, of course, you're a brilliant network engineer who would never make a silly mistake or have a bug in their custom router solution. Which I guess is why most people use Google or Amazon spyware for internet in their homes.

ok_dad 5y ago
Thanks for that, it is what I figured. I have a really old, nice, router running one of the WRT-like OSes and I really, really don't want to do that anymore. I have a small family and do not want to mess with this stuff. I might just bite the bullet and hook up a few more of the Google routers. I hate using Google, and don't trust them, but I probably trust them more than most other brands in this space. Also, I can't argue that I don't get good performance from their stuff. The only problem is, if I turn off the cloud features with this thing, I can't even do port forwarding or anything! Who the F puts that behind a cloud? Anyways, thanks for the answer.

InTheArena 5y ago

If you can get your hands on it - Check out the pre-release Unifi Dream Router. PoE (to drive other AP), Gateway and built in AP all in one.

ksec 5y ago

It is a real shame Apple stopped their AirPort Express. But if you could still get one 2nd hand it is great.

InTheArena 5y ago
I know it's "in" to shit on ubiqitui right now - but the new Ubiquti Dream Router and the older Unifi Dream Machine are the best spiritual successor I have seen to this device. The UDM comes out of the box with the switch and AP, which performas well, while the UDR also has PoE switches and WIFI 6 in case you want to run other APs or security cameras. And before anyone else jumps in with old information,as of the latest firmware, it does not require cloud access. And the PPoE performance problem has been fixed. It was a bumpy transition for a bit because they moved off of Vyatta to generic Linux for the routers.

darkr 5y ago

Not sure if it passes the “don’t have to screw with” test (as configuration generally requires a decent level of networking knowledge), but I’m quite happy with Mikrotik Audience access points/routers.

tw04 5y ago

Synology has been far and away the best I've deployed for "friends and family". I've not received a single phone call for support and it's the first wifi product I can say that about. They also are introducing full VLAN support in DSM 1.3 which should be out soon if you're a power user. Honestly if they supported PoE for their extenders I probably would have switched out to it. The extenders will mesh wired or wireless which is nice.

nrclark 5y ago
Do their products have much in the way of phone-home / cloud access?
- tw04 5y ago
  They have a reverse tunnel that you can enable for remote access, but you can disable it. https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/help/SRM/NetworkCenter/internet_quickconnect_ddns?version= https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/help/SRM/NetworkCenter... I personally like that because I can safely remotely access the routers I've deployed for others if I ever have a reason to. They just need to check a box to turn it on or off in the GUI. They also have an "experience improvement" program that sends home telemetry that can also be disabled. As far as I know there's no "phone home" that you can't turn off if you don't want it.
  - aborsy 5y ago
    QuickConnect makes your NAS wide open to internet. It does so using UPnP or a relay station in a synology data center. Not only Stnology will likely have access to users data at the relay station (see change of certificate!), DSM login page will be open to anyone on internet (you can try random usernames on https://quickconnect.to/ https://quickconnect.to/ and connect to people’s NASes). Maybe for routers it’s different, but this service is not secure for NAS.

djhworld 5y ago

I've been building a little TP-Link Omada setup for my home. There is a cloud option for the controller software or you can buy the hardware controller (or...run it yourself) Was going to go all in on Ubiquiti but was put off when reading about the reliability issues, plus was way more expensive. Pleased with my router + access point + PoE switch + hardware controller :)

imiric 5y ago

I'm currently in the process of moving my home network from Ubiquiti to an open solution with a few Mikrotik RBM11Gs to serve as APs, and will probably also replace my Netgate SG-3100 with pfSense with likely a PC Engines machine. All will probably be running OpenWrt, though if that's too limiting / buggy, I'll just use plain Linux or OpenBSD on them. The major benefit of this setup is that you don't depend on some manufacturer for updates. Given Ubiquiti's and Netgate's recently hostile actions towards users and open source, this provides a great peace of mind. The other benefit is that you're free to upgrade your hardware as needed, which particularly for WiFi cards is great to have. Right now I'm sticking with WiFi 5 because of the costs, but in the future upgrading to 6E would just be a matter of changing the cards (assuming they're supported by the OS). Speaking of cards, I went with Compex WLE1216V5-20, which have an Atheros chip and are thus much better supported on Linux than Broadcom, etc.

ericd 5y ago
I've been considering replacing my EdgeRouter with a pfsense box (probably the Netgate 6100), have you been dissatisfied with your Netgate?
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  Unless something radical has changed in the last half year or so, pfSense will be a giant PITA if you have "residential" IPv6. That is, anything but a completely static prefix.
  - ericd 5y ago
    Oh interesting, thanks for the heads up.
  - technofiend 5y ago
    I am unhappy with pfsense's inability to push gigabit traffic on my hardware, but IPV6 works fine for me. I'd be curious what isp you have and what your issue is.

cycomanic 5y ago

I heard good things about PCengines APU products (e.g. see here https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/apu3d4-open-source-router https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/apu3d4-open-source-r... I'm not affiliated). You essentially run openwrt or pfsense on your own hardware. Alternatively, many people are now putting pfsense/opnsense on their own hardware. In particular thin-clients are very capable and some can be easily be retrofitted with multiple ethernet ports (however, prices have gone up significantly for some of these over the last year). The one thing you need to be careful with is wifi hardware compatibility. Some instructions here: https://boratory.net/pfsense-firewall-futro-s900/ https://boratory.net/pfsense-firewall-futro-s900/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?resources/introduction-to-the-hp-t730-thin-client-the-little-box-that-could.41/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?resources/introduc...

ValentineC 5y ago
> The one thing you need to be careful with is wifi hardware compatibility. I'd suggest using old consumer routers as access points.

davidandgoliath 5y ago

Ubiquiti amplifi hd. I use the mesh stuff.

fifteenforty 5y ago

Have you heard of Fritz!box from AVM? That’s what I have setup for a few friends, with good success. Personally I use a Mikrotik hap ac 3 in my apartment. They have a ‘mesh’ product in the Audience line.

sam_lowry_ 5y ago

I am happy with hAP ac2 running OpenWRT. RouterOS is a bit clunky for a Linux user. They kind of mimick Cisco UX, which is a big mess for everyone except professional network engineers.