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Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

codinghorror.com

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Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#91

Post by yskchu »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #63

Running Linux? Avoid any ASUS routers unless you're flashing a new firmware. Awful experience. My last one was the N15. It wouldn't even give out a DHCP lease to two different computers and four different NICs. And, as for: "Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the in…

I can't comment on the N15, which is a low end router; however the more powerful ASUS routers are great, I have both a rt-n56u (now with my in-laws), and a rt-n66u, and they both work spiffingly.

Also, check out the reviews on smallnetbuilder etc, they have excellent ratings for these two routers, with the most high recommendations for both.

There's no need to rubbish the whole range of ASUS routers :)

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#92

Post by portman »

citricsquid wrote: post #6

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 currently use a NetGear FVS336G for load-balance and fail-over of two broadband connections (cable modem and FiOS).

http://www.netgear.com/business/products/security/wired-VPN-...

It's not as sexy as the FOSS solutions on this thread, but it has the advantage of working just by plugging in power and two Ethernet cables.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#93

Post by pyre »

oz wrote: post #65
utku_karatas2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute. Is it the CPU and memory factor on the router that causes the "internet is slow, somebody close your torrents" nuisance? I always thought it was the bandwidth getting choked. Could someone expand on this topic?

Every TCP/UDP endpoint (such as a client or a server) maintains a state-table. As you might guess, it stores the state of each connection. You can view it using the 'netstat' command on Windows and Linux. Bittorrent tends to create several entries in the state-table (since you're typically connected to hundred of seeds/leeches), which are each stored in memory, and uses up CPU resources to setup/maintain/teardown. So…

  > Early models of the now-famous Linksys WRT54G could
  > reliably be crashed by torrenting while using stock 
  > firmware. A power-cycle was necessary to get it
  > running again. Fun times.
I had an older Linksys model, but it would get into a state where the max bandwidth it would allow would be 32kB/s.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#94

Post by ComputerGuru »

sge wrote: post #83

A few months ago I researched how to install open-source router firmware. I ended up chosing dd-wrt. I had some security concerns (such a technical forum stores passwords in plain text!! Does this imply anything the security of the project?) which I voiced on their forum. Their responses shocked me: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=681593 I'm probably not going to install dd-wrt.

I had a similar issue I raised in their forums (too lazy to Google it now) where something in my configuration led to a repeatable restart of the router each time. Denial of service, thus a security vulnerability. They were rude and arrogant. I left for Tomato.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#95

Post by cdr »

derleth wrote: post #86
cdr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it depends on the provider. The two giant cable telecoms I've dealt with charged ~$5/month for a wifi router which is really highway robbery - especially considering the quality of the routers they provided. Their provided cablemodems were pretty much universally awful too, so you were better off buying both your own modem and router - but they obviously didn't advertise that you could do this, if you were…

> amazed that they could get wifi without paying TW $5/month Hm. I'm kind of amazed leasing a router from TW wasn't written into the contract.

I realize you're quite possibly kidding, but it's just an optional extra - quick call to TW then swapping the wifi modem for a plain old modem and it's off the bill. Easier than cancelling HBO certainly.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#96

Post by orbitingpluto »

yskchu wrote: post #91
orbitingpluto wrote: post #63

Running Linux? Avoid any ASUS routers unless you're flashing a new firmware. Awful experience. My last one was the N15. It wouldn't even give out a DHCP lease to two different computers and four different NICs. And, as for: "Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the in…

I can't comment on the N15, which is a low end router; however the more powerful ASUS routers are great, I have both a rt-n56u (now with my in-laws), and a rt-n66u, and they both work spiffingly. Also, check out the reviews on smallnetbuilder etc, they have excellent ratings for these two routers, with the most high recommendations for both. There's no need to rubbish the whole range of ASUS routers :)

Thanks for sharing. I did not have the same prejudices against Asus' other products, but I did for their routers. (Twice bitten anecdotal evidence re: routers)

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#98

Post by droidist »

riobard wrote: post #97

Can anyone familiar with DD-wrt/OpenWrt/Tomato comment with their relative merits against each other?

Tomato is really simple and stable but supports fewer devices. OpenWrt has more of a general purpose embedded Linux feel and lots of people build cool Wi-Fi enabled electronics projects with it (for examples: http://hackaday.com/tag/openwrt). I've never personally used DD-WRT.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#100

Post by zobzu »

riobard wrote: post #97

Can anyone familiar with DD-wrt/OpenWrt/Tomato comment with their relative merits against each other?

dd-wrt is simple and has a good ui but not really open/no real tinkering possible etc

openwrt is very open and community-like (with actual VCS, package building scripts, package manager, and so on), easy to tinker and so on. But there's no neat and simple UI. Command line or uhm, "half decent UIs that u have to install and setup"

tomato has a very good UI, is open source, but isn't really all that easy to tinker with (none of the openwrt niceties)

I generally go with openwrt because, i like command line anyway, and i like being able to make my router do absolutely everything. for example, patching my openvpn and installing the package took 5min with openwrt.

Basically, if you're not into tinkering i'd just go with tomato. If you are, i'd go with openwrt. If somehow tomato doesn't work for you, dd-wrt.

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