Recommendation for router

homenetworkrouter · 31 Oct 2018 at 18:41

I have an Orbi which works great and fulfils all my wifi needs. However, it does not have some features that I need. Therefore, I'm planning to make it an AP only and purchase a not so expensive router that would have the following

- Dual WAN / 4g failover
- Secure separate guest network
- bandwidth control
- wireless not necessary

Does anyone know what would be a good fit?

BigT · 31 Oct 2018 at 18:51

I’m not sure you’ll find a “not so expensive” router with these features. Does the Orbi support vLAN tagging on a different SSID? If not then with no other wireless options I don’t know how you’ll do your guest network for WiFi devices.

Does your dual WAN you want include the 4G or is that on top of two WAN connections?

Could you elaborate a bit more on what you want from bandwidth control? By device or by traffic type or by time of day or a mix or something else?

homenetworkrouter · 31 Oct 2018 at 19:00

I believe Orbi has VLAN support. It also has a guest network that can be enabled. However, I don't really like to use the Orbi for 2 reasons
1. As a guest client connected on the guest network, I can see all the devices in the main network. (seems like a known issue)
2. As an admin, I want to limit the bandwidth that my guest network can use but Orbi does not seem to have this ability.

For this, I could possibly connect another router and make it an AP and make that my guest network. However, that does not solve my Dual WAN/failover problem

Dual WAN would be 1 WAN + 4G failover. For bandwidth control, I would like to limit the total traffic that the guest network can use.

EDIT:

I feel like I can solve my problem by doing the following

Get this ASUS router (i think it has dual wan) - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-rt-ac88u-dual-band-wireless-ac3100-gigabit-router-nw-099-as.html

Connect my ORBI as AP only - main network
Connect another router limited to 54mbps capability or less as AP only - guest network

However, I feel like this is a convoluted solution for what seems to me like a common problem.

BigT · 31 Oct 2018 at 20:05

Dual WAN aside it is a fairly common thing but it appears from a quick bit of browsing the Orbi just implements it poorly as you allude to.

I can’t comment on the Asus but I can tell you how I would (and indeed have) done it.

But a quad NiC mini PC for about £200 and install pfSense on it. Also buy a simple mifi type router with an Ethernet port. I’ve used a TP-Link and Zyxel LTE router for this before. Cost about £80 I think. One NIC to whatever does your WAN now, one to your new LTE router and one to your LAN and Orbi system. If your Orbi can tag VLANs on separate SSIDs then the pfSense router appliance will put traffic on different subnets and route/isolate how you want. PfSense also supports rate limiting.

You’ll be double NATd on the mobile WAN but 4G uses CGNAT anyway so I don’t suppose it will cause you issues.

This setup is a bit more complicated but will give you ultimate flexibility plus a whole lot of other features you might find useful from network wide ad blocking to policy based routing to a VPN or being able to run a VPN server to connect to your network from anywhere on the internet.

If you wanted to save money I suspect you could replace a pfSense appliance in the above scenario with a Netgate router (essentially a pre-built official pfSense router) , Ubiquiti ERL3 or a Mikrotik device. The latter two would need someone familiar with them to confirm to be certain.

Ish · 1 Nov 2018 at 09:49

I have this for sale which may suit your needs https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/draytek-vigor-2925-dual-wan-router-firewall.18835293/

BigT · 1 Nov 2018 at 10:39

Ish said:
I have this for sale which may suit your needs https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/draytek-vigor-2925-dual-wan-router-firewall.18835293/

Do you know if the rate control can be done on VLANs through tagging. The manual only mentions it when using different SSIDs (irrelevant as OP has existing wireless) or through using physical ports on the router for VLANs which would also be problematic for the OP as they'd have to have a different AP solution into two different ports, one for rate controlled guest VLAN and one for internal clients.

Steveocee · 1 Nov 2018 at 12:10

homenetworkrouter said:
Does anyone know what would be a good fit?

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB750Gr3

Fits exactly! Relatively steep learning curve getting it up and running though.

- Dual WAN / 4g failover Has USB input and as many WANs as you want to configure.
- Secure separate guest network As many as you like
- bandwidth control Yes with either simple queues or advanced queue trees
- wireless not necessary Has no wireless