11 ms·

I probably will. The OnHub has performed substantially better than the other consumer wireless routers I've used, and after 5 years it's due to be replaced anyw

by zmj 5y ago

I probably will. The OnHub has performed substantially better than the other consumer wireless routers I've used, and after 5 years it's due to be replaced anyway. Might as well take the discount.

tw04 5y ago
I would suggest taking a look at synology. The 2600ac is going on 6 years old and about to get the latest feature release (1.3) with no immediate plans to eol it. And unlike Google they have a long history of LTS.
- pde3 5y ago
  How do you find the RF performance? For me the OnHub was vastly better than other home wifi gear I've used, but would consider more trustworthy replacements if they have comparable performance...
  - tw04 5y ago
    I guess I don’t have a ton to compare it to. Installed for the neighbors and they get signal from the office in the front of the house to the pool out back, so good? Before that they had a cambium router running DD-wrt that didn’t have anywhere near the range. You can also buy multiple, they do mesh networking either wireless or wired. They also just announced a 6600 that supports WiFi-6e.
- rpdillon 5y ago
  This is precisely what I did. My OnHub was having issues about 18 months ago, so I did some research. I was mostly interested in getting a browser-based interface back, push security updates from the vendor, and buying from a company that had a good track record of treating customers well and supporting their products. I picked up the Synology and have been very impressed. It got my family through the pandemic scenario of four simultaneous video conference streams with 30+ participants each with flying colors. This is my third Synology product, and I have an extremely high opinion of them. The other two products are NAS products, and both have been just as bulletproof for me.
cube00 5y ago
Make sure you check out some of the other "pro-sumer" lines first. I moved from a flaky consumer router which dropped Wifi all the time to a Ubiquiti which has been rock solid. I'm not recommending Ubiquiti specifically given recent events but just using it as an example of a prosumer brand, even a few years old now and it still gets firmware updates, where as my old consumer router would be lucky to get any updates at all.
- sosodev 5y ago
  Yes! I’ve been using a Microtik router and Ubiquiti access point for a couple years now with zero issues.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >Re: Ubiquiti Investigators say they were able to tie the downloads to Sharp and his work-issued laptop because his Internet connection briefly failed on several occasions while he was downloading the Ubiquiti data. Those outages were enough to prevent Sharp’s Surfshark VPN connection from functioning properly [0] Yeah, surfashark takes an extra few minutes to load after you start your machine. Maybe he got over eager. I wonder if he has a good lawsuit case for this "Your honor, I was trying to do crime but the failure of the defendant's product resulted in a life-ruining indictment" [0] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ubiquiti-developer-charged-with-extortion-causing-2020-breach/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ubiquiti-developer-charg...
- robocat 5y ago
  > Make sure you check out some of the other "pro-sumer" lines first Unless you enjoy networking as a hobby, I would worry with that strategy that there is a sizeable risk of wasting your time with unreliable devices, with ongoing maintenance work, or having to rework your network in a few years. My current solution is to buy Unifi UAP-AC-LR (~120USD) and configure it as an access point using the “Unifi Network” app from my phone, and hopefully never touch it again. I have done this at friends, and fixed their WiFi woes, without requiring much of my time (occasional complaints that the WiFi isn’t working, but not due to the device*, just ISP or router issues). Easy to plug the AP into a new router if you change ISP or move houses. * Well, one device just stopped working with a hardware fault: I think due to being installed in a very hot area. I haven’t had software issues or flakiness. Flakiness is my previous experience of prosumer devices and what I most want to avoid.
pantalaimon 5y ago
> after 5 years it's due to be replaced anyway Are people really replacing their home network infrastructure every 5 years?
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Heck no - ask an ISP, they keep them boxes in homes till they drop.
- bonoboTP 5y ago
  I use the same Linksys WRT54GL since around 2006 and it never drops the connection. I flashed dd-wrt on it back more than a decade ago and it "just works".
- harha 5y ago
  The best move is to add cables where possible. I’ve got a slightly upper scale consumer mesh network (with Ethernet backhaul) for anything that moves, everything else is connected via cables (have to admit that I only had to draw one cable from the fiber outlet to the other side of the room where an Ethernet outlet was ready) and gigabit switches, both of them at a very low cost. I get almost the same speed and latency at any wired device as I do at the router, even though the cables going to the rooms are 10+ years old. Unless you’re living out in the wild with no devices to interfere, speed and reliability will be well worth the effort and save a lot on ineffective Wi-Fi gear.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > The best move is to add cables where possible. Can't recommend this enough. WiFi is great for mobility but it's just not that reliable. For anything that doesn't have to be moving, pull some ethernet to it and be happy for the long haul.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Very much agreed. If a network-attached device is always in one place and it has an ethernet port, it has a cable. If it's always in one place and it doesn't have an ethernet port, there's a cable to the wireless point in that room or the next. 5-port gigabit switches are about $20 each. A 12-port gigabit switch anchors the whole thing. None of them take configuration. This is harder but not impossible for people who live in apartments; white cable run along the edge of the ceiling or along the foot of the wall is a good bet.
worik 5y ago
Is five years enough? For you maybe. I think it is nothing like enough. My guitar amplifier is about twenty years old. My house is thirty and will probably make it to 300 (climate catastrophes wiling) I do not buy Google products, if I did I would stop.
- jkelleyrtp 5y ago
  Well, electric guitars have been around for over 80 years and houses even longer. This whole wireless internet thing is pretty recent and is getting increasingly better every year.
  - prmoustache 5y ago
    But if you are living with the current performance just fine, why do you have to seek a faster one. As long as I can work, play 2 concurrent movies while having videocalls at the same time, I don't see the point upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. Unless the security of my devices is at risk.
  - Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
    I have some power tool from the 60, with a deviation of precision about a 1/100mm from manufacturing time, while abused in factory. Heck, I just got a new drill from 1959, with the same. They were also “recent” design at the time…
ineedasername 5y ago
Why is it due to be replaced? Has your bandwidth speed substantially improved to the point that OnHub can no longer keep up? Because otherwise it sounds like you're happy with where you're at. There's no reason to replace a well-functioning device that does everything you need just because it's reached the end of the ever-shortening consumer electronics lifecycle. My own router is about ~7 years old, I have twice the devices connected as I did when I purchased it, and it still handle my 200Mbs broadband just fine among all devices in use.
- acdha 5y ago
  WiFi isn’t that simple: every generation makes substantial improvements in things like how they handle contention with multiple clients or interference. Since most of us have more than one device active these days, that is noticeable — especially if you have devices which also talk to each other rather than exclusively over the internet. When I replaced my 2016 OnHub + Google WiFi mesh with an Eero WiFi 6 system, I saw across the board improvements in latency and bandwidth from almost every client (faster ones more than doubled). We also lost the sporadic hangs for iOS devices which Google never fixed for totally innocent reasons.
  - causi 5y ago
    Did you notice those improvements or did you just do benchmarks to see if they improved? Not everyone's needs are the same of course, but I have no complaints about my seven year old Nighthawk R7000. Latency-sensitive devices like game consoles are ethernet, phones and laptops are 5GHz, and everything else is 2.4GHz.
    - prmoustache 5y ago
      I think this is a case of first world country arrogance of putting perfectly working things in the landfill just for the heck of it.
    - acdha 5y ago
      I found it noticeable for anything latency sensitive - conferencing, Terraform/SSH, etc. (losing Google’s iOS hangs was extremely noticeable, of course, but that’s for a different reason) The key thing to remember is that there’s considerable variability across different peoples’ experience. If you live in a widely spaced suburban house, you probably don’t need to worry about interference the way an apartment dweller does or even someone in a city where the neighbor’s property starts a lot closer. The layout and materials used in your house similarly have a big impact on whether your devices are operating on 5GHz close to a base station or 2.4GHz further away. Since you have your latency sensitive devices on Ethernet, you probably are fine with an old AP. Cables are definitely better but not everyone has permission or a suitable way to run them (my house built in the 1930s did not include spare conduit).

by zmj 5y ago

I probably will. The OnHub has performed substantially better than the other consumer wireless routers I've used, and after 5 years it's due to be replaced anyway. Might as well take the discount.

tw04 5y ago

I would suggest taking a look at synology. The 2600ac is going on 6 years old and about to get the latest feature release (1.3) with no immediate plans to eol it. And unlike Google they have a long history of LTS.

pde3 5y ago
How do you find the RF performance? For me the OnHub was vastly better than other home wifi gear I've used, but would consider more trustworthy replacements if they have comparable performance...
- tw04 5y ago
  I guess I don’t have a ton to compare it to. Installed for the neighbors and they get signal from the office in the front of the house to the pool out back, so good? Before that they had a cambium router running DD-wrt that didn’t have anywhere near the range. You can also buy multiple, they do mesh networking either wireless or wired. They also just announced a 6600 that supports WiFi-6e.
rpdillon 5y ago
This is precisely what I did. My OnHub was having issues about 18 months ago, so I did some research. I was mostly interested in getting a browser-based interface back, push security updates from the vendor, and buying from a company that had a good track record of treating customers well and supporting their products. I picked up the Synology and have been very impressed. It got my family through the pandemic scenario of four simultaneous video conference streams with 30+ participants each with flying colors. This is my third Synology product, and I have an extremely high opinion of them. The other two products are NAS products, and both have been just as bulletproof for me.

cube00 5y ago

Make sure you check out some of the other "pro-sumer" lines first. I moved from a flaky consumer router which dropped Wifi all the time to a Ubiquiti which has been rock solid. I'm not recommending Ubiquiti specifically given recent events but just using it as an example of a prosumer brand, even a few years old now and it still gets firmware updates, where as my old consumer router would be lucky to get any updates at all.

sosodev 5y ago
Yes! I’ve been using a Microtik router and Ubiquiti access point for a couple years now with zero issues.
ineedasername 5y ago
>Re: Ubiquiti Investigators say they were able to tie the downloads to Sharp and his work-issued laptop because his Internet connection briefly failed on several occasions while he was downloading the Ubiquiti data. Those outages were enough to prevent Sharp’s Surfshark VPN connection from functioning properly [0] Yeah, surfashark takes an extra few minutes to load after you start your machine. Maybe he got over eager. I wonder if he has a good lawsuit case for this "Your honor, I was trying to do crime but the failure of the defendant's product resulted in a life-ruining indictment" [0] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ubiquiti-developer-charged-with-extortion-causing-2020-breach/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ubiquiti-developer-charg...
robocat 5y ago
> Make sure you check out some of the other "pro-sumer" lines first Unless you enjoy networking as a hobby, I would worry with that strategy that there is a sizeable risk of wasting your time with unreliable devices, with ongoing maintenance work, or having to rework your network in a few years. My current solution is to buy Unifi UAP-AC-LR (~120USD) and configure it as an access point using the “Unifi Network” app from my phone, and hopefully never touch it again. I have done this at friends, and fixed their WiFi woes, without requiring much of my time (occasional complaints that the WiFi isn’t working, but not due to the device*, just ISP or router issues). Easy to plug the AP into a new router if you change ISP or move houses. * Well, one device just stopped working with a hardware fault: I think due to being installed in a very hot area. I haven’t had software issues or flakiness. Flakiness is my previous experience of prosumer devices and what I most want to avoid.

pantalaimon 5y ago

> after 5 years it's due to be replaced anyway Are people really replacing their home network infrastructure every 5 years?

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Heck no - ask an ISP, they keep them boxes in homes till they drop.
bonoboTP 5y ago
I use the same Linksys WRT54GL since around 2006 and it never drops the connection. I flashed dd-wrt on it back more than a decade ago and it "just works".
harha 5y ago
The best move is to add cables where possible. I’ve got a slightly upper scale consumer mesh network (with Ethernet backhaul) for anything that moves, everything else is connected via cables (have to admit that I only had to draw one cable from the fiber outlet to the other side of the room where an Ethernet outlet was ready) and gigabit switches, both of them at a very low cost. I get almost the same speed and latency at any wired device as I do at the router, even though the cables going to the rooms are 10+ years old. Unless you’re living out in the wild with no devices to interfere, speed and reliability will be well worth the effort and save a lot on ineffective Wi-Fi gear.
- jjav 5y ago
  > The best move is to add cables where possible. Can't recommend this enough. WiFi is great for mobility but it's just not that reliable. For anything that doesn't have to be moving, pull some ethernet to it and be happy for the long haul.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  Very much agreed. If a network-attached device is always in one place and it has an ethernet port, it has a cable. If it's always in one place and it doesn't have an ethernet port, there's a cable to the wireless point in that room or the next. 5-port gigabit switches are about $20 each. A 12-port gigabit switch anchors the whole thing. None of them take configuration. This is harder but not impossible for people who live in apartments; white cable run along the edge of the ceiling or along the foot of the wall is a good bet.

worik 5y ago

Is five years enough? For you maybe. I think it is nothing like enough. My guitar amplifier is about twenty years old. My house is thirty and will probably make it to 300 (climate catastrophes wiling) I do not buy Google products, if I did I would stop.

jkelleyrtp 5y ago
Well, electric guitars have been around for over 80 years and houses even longer. This whole wireless internet thing is pretty recent and is getting increasingly better every year.
- prmoustache 5y ago
  But if you are living with the current performance just fine, why do you have to seek a faster one. As long as I can work, play 2 concurrent movies while having videocalls at the same time, I don't see the point upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. Unless the security of my devices is at risk.
- Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
  I have some power tool from the 60, with a deviation of precision about a 1/100mm from manufacturing time, while abused in factory. Heck, I just got a new drill from 1959, with the same. They were also “recent” design at the time…

ineedasername 5y ago

Why is it due to be replaced? Has your bandwidth speed substantially improved to the point that OnHub can no longer keep up? Because otherwise it sounds like you're happy with where you're at. There's no reason to replace a well-functioning device that does everything you need just because it's reached the end of the ever-shortening consumer electronics lifecycle. My own router is about ~7 years old, I have twice the devices connected as I did when I purchased it, and it still handle my 200Mbs broadband just fine among all devices in use.

acdha 5y ago
WiFi isn’t that simple: every generation makes substantial improvements in things like how they handle contention with multiple clients or interference. Since most of us have more than one device active these days, that is noticeable — especially if you have devices which also talk to each other rather than exclusively over the internet. When I replaced my 2016 OnHub + Google WiFi mesh with an Eero WiFi 6 system, I saw across the board improvements in latency and bandwidth from almost every client (faster ones more than doubled). We also lost the sporadic hangs for iOS devices which Google never fixed for totally innocent reasons.
- causi 5y ago
  Did you notice those improvements or did you just do benchmarks to see if they improved? Not everyone's needs are the same of course, but I have no complaints about my seven year old Nighthawk R7000. Latency-sensitive devices like game consoles are ethernet, phones and laptops are 5GHz, and everything else is 2.4GHz.
  - prmoustache 5y ago
    I think this is a case of first world country arrogance of putting perfectly working things in the landfill just for the heck of it.
  - acdha 5y ago
    I found it noticeable for anything latency sensitive - conferencing, Terraform/SSH, etc. (losing Google’s iOS hangs was extremely noticeable, of course, but that’s for a different reason) The key thing to remember is that there’s considerable variability across different peoples’ experience. If you live in a widely spaced suburban house, you probably don’t need to worry about interference the way an apartment dweller does or even someone in a city where the neighbor’s property starts a lot closer. The layout and materials used in your house similarly have a big impact on whether your devices are operating on 5GHz close to a base station or 2.4GHz further away. Since you have your latency sensitive devices on Ethernet, you probably are fine with an old AP. Cables are definitely better but not everyone has permission or a suitable way to run them (my house built in the 1930s did not include spare conduit).