Isp’s Routers vs others. A question

Magic_x_uk · 29 Dec 2018 at 17:54

Hi. Curious to know the answer.

Most isp’s supply a router. I have a black one from sky. Which works fine. Can connect all my WiFi devices to it and it is also connected to a network switch. For other hard wired devices.

But I’m curious what the other routers that you can go out and buy do.

Is it just a replacement. Or something else?

Thank you

michty_me · 29 Dec 2018 at 18:35

Some have more features than the standard ISP supplied items, Better build quality (Questionable though), More powerful processing etc etc

WJA96 · 29 Dec 2018 at 19:23

Some of the ISP supplied units are VERY good. The much maligned BT Home products have excellent WLAN performance and the current EE offering is also excellent.

Fundamentally, if. You want to go with a 3rd party solution you generally can and you might get some more advanced features (Intrusion Prevention/Detection), Antivirus, better firewall options, the ability to act as a modem or to do transparent NAT, preset VPN solutions, the ability to process multiple public fixed IP addresses are all features not commonly found on ISP supplied products but they are standard on most high-end Netgear, ASUS and TP-Link units. At the very high end you can get multiple WAN inputs with the ability to link them together or failover from a primary to a secondary WAN and the option of a WAN connection from a USB 4G modem is also becoming quite common.

So there are lots of features you may not want, and don’t need, so your ISP supplied unit works fine for most people most of the time.

What you generally don’t get with a 3rd party unit is better WLAN range simply because transmit power is limited by law and even if you could blast out signal, most of your handheld devices couldn’t establish a link because they can’t blast out a signal as well. And one-way communication WLAN is pretty useless.

neodude · 30 Dec 2018 at 19:40

I run a PfSense VM as my router with a separate Ubiquiti WiFi Access Point. The main advantages for me are the far superior WiFi range (AP is Ceiling mounted and covers the entire house, garage & garden), greater processing power allowing me to run a VPN server and 3 VPN clients, advanced flow control including fq_codel which basically allows everyone in my house to share the internet fairly, advanced DNS filtering for customised family & AD filtering, Dynamic DNS allowing easy external access to my Web Hosted services and a load of other features.

WJA96 · 30 Dec 2018 at 20:28

neodude said:
I run a PfSense VM as my router with a separate Ubiquiti WiFi Access Point. The main advantages for me are the far superior WiFi range (AP is Ceiling mounted and covers the entire house, garage & garden), greater processing power allowing me to run a VPN server and 3 VPN clients, advanced flow control including fq_codel which basically allows everyone in my house to share the internet fairly, advanced DNS filtering for customised family & AD filtering, Dynamic DNS allowing easy external access to my Web Hosted services and a load of other features.

Yes, this is another stage (or a couple of stages) on from buying a better router than the one supplied by your ISP. Like going from a Ford Focus to a Focus RS then a Ford GT. One is more than adequate for what people need, one is more performance than most people need and one is so much performance only the very skilled can exploit it all.

Jamauk · 30 Dec 2018 at 20:44

I think the good thing with ISP supplied routers is they are useful for the majority of people, the stereotypical image that springs to mind is my 70 year old auntie who has little to no computer knowledge and simply wants something that can be plugged in and the iPad connected to it and so special features are not needed and so therefore not included, reducing processing power/need and potentially increasing the life of router (makes things easier for me as I rarely have to go and fix things!). Support is also easier for an ISP to provide, think of how Sky supply only their router and have issues with other routers being used. Same applies for other ISP routers, if it isn't working they can explain how to reset it and that probably solves most issues.

I gave up with ISP routers a long time ago when I wanted port forwarding, IP reservation, DDNS and a few other features - I know ISP routers provide these features, but things like the GUI being so slow was frustrating, and not being that intuitive, etc.