New Router - Which way to go?

[alex24]

My old ASUS RT-N56U is starting to show signs that it may be giving up (requiring reboots, very slow to access etc.) and therefore, given I now work from home and internet access reliability is crucial, I am looking to replace it. I'm on VDSL as that's the best I can get - 22Mbps

My setup is like this:

Huawei HG612 VDSL Modem
ASUS RT-N56U Router (WAN, DHCP, Basic Firewall/Port forwarding, Wifi Disabled, DNS Server Points to Pi-Hole)
Netgear 24-Port 1Gbps 1U switch (have approx 15 Cat5e LAN drops around the house for various devices)
Unifi UAP-AC-LR
Unifi UAP-AC-Lite
Home Server (2012 Mac Mini on Ubuntu Sever as it's low power, but probably need more server-like hardware eventually to get RAID and more storage up and running)
- Pi-Hole
- Unbound
- UniFi Controller
- Homebridge
- Plex (Music/Pictures/Limited Video streaming)
- NAS

Possible options:

1. New Consumer Router.

Replace the ASUS Router with a similar new item and disable Wifi. I'm not very keen on buying some expensive consumer-orientated device that looks like a spider, just to take off the antennae and stick it in my network cabinet, though... It may also lack the features I'm looking for.

2. New prosumer/business router.

Anybody out there still doing this who is any good? I recall DrayTek being a player but they seem expensive from what I expected.

3. UniFi.

One of the many UniFi options, since I am using the APs and Controller. USG second hand could be the cheapest route in with its limitations. I don't need any more APs but looks like to get a UniFi router you have to spend big and get something like a UDM. I don't see much love for their routers, though and whilst I like the APs their software isn't exactly bulletproof.

4. PfSense/OPNSense/Untangled/Others.

I like the idea of building my own router and firewall and having control and I'm not averse to spending the time to put it together. However, assuming that putting a router on the server is a bad idea (in case I need to reboot, server fails etc.), then I will need another device to run this, and my biggest issue here is the cost of the initial outlay, plus the ongoing power consumption. E.g. at approx 10W the ASUS router probably costs about £20 a year to leave on, whereas a cheap x86 PC at 60W average may get to almost £150, maybe more now I'm on over 29p per kWh... Ideally it would be something small and low power, under 20W. I could spare a 1U short depth space in my cabinet for something larger as well, although the home server replacement may take that eventually.

I'm assuming that sometime in the next 10 years FTTH will arrive and I will take it, so assuming if I buy a new router I should have that in mind and speeds of several hundred Mbps may be a reality. I also have a server and lots of IoT things going on meaning that I need decent access to the router setup and it should be relatively fully-featured. I may tinker with network separation, VLANs etc. and more in the future.

Of course I don't want to spend too much (who does), since all I need is the routing/firewall capabilities really, but could probably easily justify £75-£150 depending on capabilities. Maybe I'm being too stingy and these things are just all very expensive now?

This kit also has to be reliable and set-and-forget enough to ensure that I'm not constantly bothering the clients (I also sometimes call them the wife and kids) with network changes and issues as well as reliable for working, although I'd assume the more professional options would be geared towards stability.

I took a look at dialogue in the Pfsense thread, as well as the UniFi thread but there doesn't seem to be much recent consensus on what the best router options really are anymore. I have to imagine many forum members having similar kinds of setups here, so very curious what people are running.

Thanks for any insights.

 

[Rainmaker]

I like the idea of building my own router and firewall and having control and I'm not averse to spending the time to put it together. However, assuming that putting a router on the server is a bad idea (in case I need to reboot, server fails etc.), then I will need another device to run this, and my biggest issue here is the cost of the initial outlay, plus the ongoing power consumption. E.g. at approx 10W the ASUS router probably costs about £20 a year to leave on, whereas a cheap x86 PC at 60W average may get to almost £150, maybe more now I'm on over 29p per kWh... Ideally it would be something small and low power, under 20W. I could spare a 1U short depth space in my cabinet for something larger as well, although the home server replacement may take that eventually.

For ~20Mbps DSL, almost anything will suffice. A device drawing 60 watts is way overkill. Something like a PC Engines APU will take closer to 5 watts, costs about the same as a half decent consumer router to buy (<£200), and has four x86 cores to run the BSD or Linux distro/spin/whatever of your choice. They will do 500Mbps to 1Gbps easily depending what OS you put on them.

 

[WJA96]

Mikrotik hEX. 5W, £40 and more router than most people could possibly need.

Or, if you’re up for a bit of future-proofing and your NAS has a free 8x PCIe slot, the Mikrotik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe will route 25Gbps traffic between its LAN and WAN ports. £200, 22W and more router than anyone other than Meta needs.

 

[alex24]

Something like a PC Engines APU will take closer to 5 watts, costs about the same as a half decent consumer router to buy (<£200), and has four x86 cores to run the BSD or Linux distro/spin/whatever of your choice.

Thank you. I took a look at these and choice, stock and distributors seem quite limited and so it was getting pretty far over £200 to get up and running. Looks like a neat solution and I'm sure would be fun to setup.

Mikrotik hEX. 5W, £40 and more router than most people could possibly need.

Or, if you’re up for a bit of future-proofing and your NAS has a free 8x PCIe slot, the Mikrotik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe will route 25Gbps traffic between its LAN and WAN ports. £200, 22W and more router than anyone other than Meta needs.

Thanks for this. So, £40 is no longer the going rate (unless you go with hEX Lite - but no gigabit), but I did take this advice and go for the hEX at £58 since it seems good value even at that price and that's less than most of the other options here, some considerably so, therefore it seemed worth a try. Only things I'm nervous about are the future underlying hardware support for the hEX on the MIPS processor versus perhaps more modern solutions, and also the steep learning curve associated with RouterOS. However, I'm not scared of learning new things, but terminology differences with my average networking knowledge could be frustrating. I'll probably take this opportunity to reconfigure some of the internal network for better security anyway, and perhaps think about setting up a VPN I can use for my cameras.

One thing that has been a constant issue in the current network is unreliable IGMP/Multicast support for things like AirPlay and especially HomeKit but when I combine UniFi, my managed Netgear switch and the current router, it's very hard to figure out a config that works well. I have got it working reasonably well now through trial and error, although HomeKit is still not fast to update. Perhaps something else to dig into with the hEX.

The PCIe solution looks very intriguing, but I would shy away from putting it in something I can't guarantee very high uptime with. My current server is not good enough for that and I am often rebooting it to mess with new software. Maybe it will be an upgrade path in the future if fibre gets to my house some day.

 

[WJA96]

That’s weird. I just checked with our distributor and for retail customers they’re quoting £36+VAT for a hEX, £50+VAT for at hEX PoE and £45+VAT for a hEX S.

 

[Armageus]

Could you not just run a router (OPNSense etc) in a VM on your home server? - For a 22Mbps connection any overhead is hardly going to matter

 

[alex24]

That’s weird. I just checked with our distributor and for retail customers they’re quoting £36+VAT for a hEX, £50+VAT for at hEX PoE and £45+VAT for a hEX S.

Probably didn't shop around enough then, although I ran out of time to review and make a decision so just pulled the trigger last night. Still seems like good value to me.

Could you not just run a router (OPNSense etc) in a VM on your home server? - For a 22Mbps connection any overhead is hardly going to matter

As above, I restart the home server regularly and it's probably not stable enough. I can't have the internet inaccessible because of that, must be a separate device.

 

[alex24]

Wow, this MikroTik hEX is tiny, I didn't realise it would be so small and compact. Even the instruction book is so small you need a magnifying glass to read it. I'll add some photos later. It actually looks like a piece of bespoke equipment you'd find in a science lab.

I'm going to do some network planning later on before I back up and rip out the existing setup, as it's a good opportunity to improve my very rushed current implementation. We'll see how difficult this is with the hEX.

 

[Armageus]

As above, I restart the home server regularly and it's probably not stable enough. I can't have the internet inaccessible because of that, must be a separate device.

Presumably you lose pihole and unbound in such a situation anyway - without DNS surely web browsing and the like is inaccessible until it's back up?

 

[alex24]

Presumably you lose pihole and unbound in such a situation anyway - without DNS surely web browsing and the like is inaccessible until it's back up?

Yes, but in my current router I have a secondary DNS server set for this eventuality. So when the server is off, I just get ads but connectivity is still there. Presumably also some wacky devices and applications that use secondary DNS server by default also route traffic that way anyway, but I don't normally see any ads anywhere so if they do it's minimal.