21–30 of 137 posts
With my Verizon FIOS's router, if I try to torrent anything it gets throttled down to less than 10KB/s, and on my old Linksys, attempting to torrent would make browsing the internet nearly impossible.
How much does QoS matter on your home router when your next door neighbor might be downloading HD pr0n and sapping all the "local loop" bandwidth?
Some people share their LANs with more disruptive users than others, so QoS on that LAN can be useful. But the article was not clear at all.
I don't know. I am going to keep on hoping that I will be able get by with the router built into my DSL modem when I switch from cable to DSL. Or that I can use ethernet to get my Mac mini on the net while using the mini's Wifi to create an ad-hoc wireless network to get the iPad I plan to buy on the net. Or that I will build a Linux box and the motherboard will have wifi onboard. Or that I will build a Linux box and…
No mention of Mikrotik? I picked up a RB750GL last week, and so far, it's everything DD-WRT/Tomato/etc wish they could be. It works as a basic plug-and-play router, but it's incredibly flexible beyond that. Check out http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features if you're interested. You can download the OS and run it in a VM if you want to give it a try before purchasing.
> No mention of Mikrotik? FTA: (...) a combination of commodity hardware and open-source firmware. It's OK that you suggest RouterOS, I'm just saying OP is not supposed to mention it.
However, I'd argue that the use of open source firmware in this case is a means to an end, since proprietary firmware generally sucks. But since this is an article about how to have a quality Internet connection, rather than how to get started in router OS development, it might be more than suitable for many of his readers.
Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…
I've done this with Soekris and Cisco. The tricky part is getting a router that will take a cable modem module (not sure if either Soekris or Cisco will), plus a DSL terminator (both Soekris and Cisco will). These are not consumer tech, and they're not cheap. Then you have to get or guess the configs for both WAN links, possibly with unhelpful residential support techs. Cisco 2600 class routers are power hungry and l…
Or if you're lucky enough for your provided devices to support real bridge, put both of your devices in dumb mode and plug that as ethernet into your dual-wan device. That's still hardware present but management is kept to the absolute minimum. Plus sometimes you don't really have a choice to use the provided devices...
BTW, do yourself a favor and don't get a Zyxel device.
One thing Jeff didn't mention is that due to the high CPU and RAM in that ASUS router, you can be downloading several different torrents and the internet experience in general won't be degraded. With my Verizon FIOS's router, if I try to torrent anything it gets throttled down to less than 10KB/s, and on my old Linksys, attempting to torrent would make browsing the internet nearly impossible.
How does this compare to buying an Airport Express/Extreme?
I hadn't heard the term QoS until today.
It looks like Airports lack it: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1115580
Which is sad. We've got 5-10 devices connected at any one time and have had really terrible problems in terms of getting a consistently fast connection.
It seems like my internet connection has gotten worse over the past 4 years living in San Francisco and it's hard to pinpoint the cause because of the lack of innovation in routers. It would be nice to see someone come out with something really innovative here that shows easily what type of traffic you are getting and what is causing slowdowns.