Router suggestions

Phemo · 4 Mar 2023 at 17:26

Hi guys,

Looking at getting Toob fibre 900/900 or maybe 900/100 Aquiss since Openreach FTTP is available in my area now and Toob should (hopefully) be very soon. If I went with Aquiss I would have to supply my own router, but even if I went with Toob I'd like to use my own kit anyway. Not that bothered about having super fast wifi as anything of importance will be connected via Ethernet and I have a 2nd AP upstairs in my house anyway. I'm no stranger to various networking kit - I've worked with Juniper, Fortinet, Palo Alto and so on for years and I've had Mikrotik and a Unifi UDM for my home setups in the past but I no longer have those. Don't really need a crazy feature set either but I do like to tinker.

So basically, what's a decent router, ideally with an inbuilt wifi AP, for around the £200 mark that'll easily handle a gig connection?

Demon · 9 Mar 2023 at 15:21

I think I'd always go for separate router / AP..

If you want cheap, want to mess around but not go too crazy, you could get an SDN setup for £232 (or £162 if you happen to have a server running at home)

TPLink ER605 Router (Gigabit WAN) - £42
TPLink EAP620HD V3 - £120
OC200 - Omada Controller - £70 (optional, if you have a server running in the house, the omada client is free)

I like the Ubiquiti Unifi stuff, I just happen to have been given some Omada compliant TPLink switches so went that route myself based on cost.

Phemo · 11 Mar 2023 at 15:51

Cheers for the input. I quite like the Unifi gear myself so might end up going with a couple of APs since the house could do with more for coverage. That's led me to think that I might just consider putting a small and low power PC together and running something like SophosXG or OPNsense on it. I did have a small Atom system running SophosXG back when I had a 200Mbit connection and that coped just fine.

Not sure how well the same system would handle a gig connection though. Might give it a go to see how well it does. Failing that I've got an ITX 1155 system that I could whack an i3-2120T in that might have enough grunt, but just want the power consumption to be as low as possible. Lots to try

Avalon · 13 Mar 2023 at 14:40

Hello stranger

OPNSense or Untangle would be my personal choice if you want upto about 8Gbit of NAT, obviously you can build out *sense to a full UTM or just do the basics. Untangle will require the Home annual subscription for the UTM side, but basic routing/VPN is included free. SophosXG gives you similar and used to be basically the full product, but they had a nasty habbit of leaving packages horribly outdated. *WRT x64 is stupidly quick/light if you just want a fully featured router with the ability to add more.

Hardware wise I would suggest spinning up a VM or use what you have to test short term. Usual rules are Intel NIC’s for compatibility and Intel CPU for AES-NI hardware acceleration, move to wireguard and it’s a whole new world

Given the likely 2.5Gb speeds available in future, if buying new hardware, consider if it makes more sense to go that route as the newer Chinese USFF ‘NUC’ style boxes are available with Intel 2.5Gbe now and if you are buying a 2.5Gbe NIC make sure it’s a later chipset revision as Intel dropped the ball on the first two (less so on the 3rd) revisions of the i225 and a 4th revision is now out iirc. You can always throw VPN in docker or on a Pi4 or similar if you prefer.

Take care

Phemo · 21 Mar 2023 at 18:56

Hey mate, hope you're well

Cheers for the suggestions. Didn't realise 2.5Gb mini PCs with a few NICS were actually quite affordable now and indeed they are. I may yet pull the trigger on those but today I was lucky enough to get hold of a pair of Juniper SRX 300 firewalls and a Juniper EX2200C switch for free so that's nice. I don't think I'll go as far as putting them in HA, but they'll be able to handle the throughput of gig WAN without an issue so that sorts that problem out for no cost at all which is nice.

Now just need to figure out what Wifi kit I want to use. An Ubiquiti AP or 2 will do the trick, especially since the EX is a PoE switch too.

Avalon · 21 Mar 2023 at 19:43

Nice score, and it’s not like you don’t know what they are capable of

Don’t laugh (too much), but I ditched my Ubiquiti kit after what must be a decade? for TPLink Deco’s.

We’ve moved a bit since you last impersonated Vin Diesel around these parts, and are now in a 3 floor town house, builders have just finished gutting the ground floor and altering the layout as of the weekend, so I lost all wired backhaul feeds and needed P2P connectivity. I doubt the neighbours would appreciate me dropping cables out of windows, so I went with a cheap pair of x20’s (AX1800) which were surprisingly not awful and it turns out can do 700Mbit node to node pretty reliably even with poor positioning, the coverage is also arguably better than my AC-Pro’s. For what they cost, I grabbed another pair of X50’s (AX3000). The only annoyance so far is the limit of two SSID’s and dependence on an app and its ongoing support, though realistically it’s fine for my needs. Coverage over the entire house with one node on the middle floor was surprisingly reasonable. I’m sure I will live to regret it, but so far, so good.