The most reliable router that exists is?

[jeff83nz]

Looking for a router that pretty much never dies / resets / hangs (i.e. instant death in game / disconnect from work VPN etc).

I currently have a AC Router, which is fast, but it literally dies once or twice a day at random intervals. It actually nicely resets itself (which is good) to sort it, but it means the internet goes down for like a min, and its interaction with works VPN means I have to restart my POS work laptop (there goes 10mins).

Sooooooo.

Is there an ultimately stable router? It needs gigabit ethernet is the only must. Decent wireless would be nice as well.

 

[jeff83nz]

Well if money is no issue then pfSense and maybe an Ubiquiti access point would be best.

What is your current router and how is everything connected?

£200 would be my price ceiling I think.

I currently have a chinese "AFOUNDRY Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router,6 External Antennas,Three Processors router"
It looks bad arse. But yeah.

Is there an alternative to pfSense that effectively runs on windows? If such could turn the home server into the home router I guess.

 

[jeff83nz]

Have to say my USG has been rock solid. It hasn't had any downtime save to reboot for critical patches, and its not expensive.

USG?

 

[jeff83nz]

ty. So Hyperlink WAN port --> one of these --> gigabyte switch -- > ethernet through apartment and one into wireless access point?

 

[jeff83nz]

is there no custom firmware available for your router? Id sooner be trying that, if you havent already, then spending £200 on stuff you potentially dont need.

It is a very random chinese job so I am going to doubt it. It's existing firmware is pretty simplistic.

 

[jeff83nz]

My pfSense box has an impeccable reliability history. It hasn't gone down once in the years I've been using it. It's current uptime is 2 months and that blip was only due to a power outage that affected the whole house.

It started life as an fanless HTPC and I added a second NIC to turn it into a router... so it's fast, silent, very reliable and didn't cost much at all...

Then I can only ever recommend access points for your wireless... a Ruckus R310 is dirt cheap and will wipe the floor in both range and throughput with any consumer-grade wifi router.

You could update your home server to be a virtualised system and run pfSense virtualised... all you need are 2 NICs in that PC (or a dual/quad NIC you can pick up dirt cheap second hand)... then your budget can go towards a really good access point. The Ubiquiti APs are pretty good, especially for their price point... but even they are junk compared to Ruckus.

You can pick up a Ruckus R310 on ebay for under £200... otherwise the R500 is an older model but almost as good and I've seen them go for under £150.

Thanks i might try this, do a virtual instance. I mean i dont need to, but a good opportunity to learn i guess.

 

[jeff83nz]

I’d widen your search to just “a router that works”. To get away from the problems you’re having you don’t need something with crazy reliability claims, you just need a piece of hardware that isn’t broken.

Agreed.

Not even my boggo vm router has the issues the op has. Sounds like crap/faulty hardware.

Yes this router is an issue, but call me fussy but most routers I find die at least every week or two, normally in the middle of a game, which playing something like dota 2 is annoying as ****. I also have a theory that where the router is / wlan intro into apartment is the cleaning room which is hot as, and suspect it is causing overheating issues. However as it is where the board that goes out to the network ports in the flat I at least need the switch there.

Yeah, with VLANs it can be done on a single NIC.

I assumed the OP would have dumb switches though.

Your assumption is correct, intending on an unmanaged switch per reasons above and cheap as.

Figure can do this whole process for the price of a network card and a 8 port giga switch. Will use the existing router for now as the wireless access point, and upgrade it when we move. Will see if it is more reliable out of the heat of the room, and not under load of being a router.


Thanks everyone for your input, one last question, any intel network card I guess will do the job for the second NIC?

 

[jeff83nz]

Just buying the switch, is there any real benefit from a £90 Nighthawk S8000 "Gaming and Streaming" switch to a totally unmanaged £18 giga switch like the Netgear GS308-100UKS?

Effectively does a smart switch take some of the load / latency of the router or network congestion? Or is it totally unnecessary? And is the Nighthawk just a overpriced version of something like a simple smart £35 giga switch?

If it makes any difference the network in question has wired the server which includes a Plex server which will be running PFSENSE virtualised, and is used in and outside the house by friends, my main gaming PC which plays things like Dota 2 and BF1, an nvidia shield which is streaming 4k content, phones, laptops, tablets are conected wirelessly. On Hyperoptic for the WLAN (internet).

 

[jeff83nz]

No real benefit to that, tbh.

If you wanted to get something a bit more beefy with the option to connect 2 devices with 10GbE... then have a look at the Netgear GS110MX

For a switch with 2x 10GbE built in, the price is pretty good.

Alternately, if thinking of getting an access point, then a PoE switch could be useful for you, to avoid using an adaptor or injector... but power adaptors and injectors work well too... so up to you.

ZyXel do a really good L2 managed PoE 1GbE switch for under £100.

Thanks, legend as always.

Have purchased a vanilla dumb 8 port giga switch for now. Will test it, with the existing router as an AP. If I am happy how it all runs using the server to drive a virtualized session of PfSense will consider if want to get PoE access points, and if so upgrade the switch.

 

[jeff83nz]

Finally had time to do this today, went to install the intel NIC I bought, realised it is PCI not PCIe.
Fail.
Awaiting new NIC in the mail.

Is there any recommended guides out there for setting this up.
So far have Oracle Virtual box installed, on that a virtual machine with 1gb ram (figured enough for small network) with PfSense installed.

 

[jeff83nz]

Yessssssss....success. Thanks all.


I have a virtualised (within Hyper V) Pfsense "router" that is feeding my network switch via the second NIC.


Tbh the most confusing thing (except everything considering I had never created a virtualised environment ever, and initially started in a stage 2 virtualisation (virtualbox) which clearly is stupid) was the fact that when you create the "virtual" switches, the internal switch still has to be flagged as an external so that you can allocate a NIC to it. This literally stumped me for over an hour. Likely impacted because I was so obssessed for ensuring the WAN NIC wasn't shared with windows.


Also it reminded me why headless servers are super annoying, when you need to go into bios, espcially when your only avaliable card is a tripple slot 1080ti. Triggering the profile on the ram which doubled power usage (silly 5820k bus speed issues), putting a card back in it, turning of the profile. Trying to start, dying. Realising on putting card back in (why did I jump ahead and take it out again) I have accidentally turned on the old over clock.