I distrust all of them. Instead I get hardware meant to be a corporate firewall, router, vpn and install Linux on it. It's more expensive and I have to do more work but that has worked well for me.
Could you explain it real quick, like an ELI5?
Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
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Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#12[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#13Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#14I distrust all of them. Instead I get hardware meant to be a corporate firewall, router, vpn and install Linux on it. It's more expensive and I have to do more work but that has worked well for me.
Could you explain it real quick, like an ELI5?
Could you explain it real quick, like an ELI5?
Why I don't trust any of them? I am not explaining this to a five year old as they will have endless questions. We would be here all day. I would instead give them some nearly pure sugar sweets and let them play on a game console and let their parents deal with the fallout. No idea if Pixie Stix are still a thing but that would be my "go to" if someone expects me to deal with their brat. They won't try that a second time.
In summary however they are all consumer devices have a low margin meaning to me that a foreign vendor would likely be easier to pay a nice lump sum to do anything from look the other way to utilizing a third party customized image that I provide them over Tor. The number of people with sensitive data would make the risk vs reward ratios desirable. There are higher probabilities that the generic devices would be utilized by members of governments, inner circles of corporations, secret organizations and so on...
A generic device meant for a small company is less likely to have world changing sensitive data and the cost is high enough that not many individuals or companies would make it a viable target. Cost vs. benefit vs risk vs reward... The vendor I am currently using at the moment is in the USA and I know they without hesitation would contact the FBI within minutes after writing a report with everything they know about me if I tried any shenanigans whereas vendors in Asia will not likely consider ethics of targeting those in the USA or the EU/UK and would happily take the money.
Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#15Cisco. They have backdoors, but those are "our" backdoors.
Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#16Mikrotik. Past experiences include Cisco (bad incentives, they make a lot of money from certifications and licenses), TP-Link (broke the case physically when pressing a button, was left without updates after some time), Ubiquiti (could not handle the load of my home network. I had the edgerouter-x though which is weak)
I was quite happy with Ubiquity for a while, but their cloud push and constantly moving and hiding features in their UI is driving me mad. Power isn't the issue since I got the UDM-SE. Mikrotik came up as the next router I'll be buying. I just want consistent CLI configuration at this point. Stop moving my cheese and forcing features I don't want.
Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#17Teltonika https://www.teltonika-networks.com/
Re: Ask HN: Which router makers do you trust most?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you explain it real quick, like an ELI5?
Could you explain it real quick, like an ELI5? Why I don't trust any of them? I am not explaining this to a five year old as they will have endless questions. We would be here all day. I would instead give them some nearly pure sugar sweets and let them play on a game console and let their parents deal with the fallout. No idea if Pixie Stix are still a thing but that would be my "go to" if someone expects me to deal…
I suspected that would be your line of reasoning (I share the same broad concern). Thanks for the write up. In a world war, armies of routers will be a thing.