Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't use Linksys routers

superevr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 150 posts

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#141

Post by ansible »

mturmon wrote: post #138
ansible wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually design wireless devices for a living and in my opinion, this is mostly bad advice. The best bet it to switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices. Option B is to turn off the higher speed modes like 802.11n. Just try to stick with 11g. If you are still having connection problems, maybe switch down to 11b, but that will be real slow even when it works. If you use an access point wit…

Thanks for this. You say "switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices" -- is the reasoning that the 5GHz signal doesn't penetrate the walls enough as you walk around with the device?

That is a factor as others have mentioned, but mostly I meant it is just that many mobile devices don't support 5GHz. And you can't just add a cheap USB dongle. That is starting to change though, so check the specs on your devices.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#142

Post by btilly »

LucasCollecchia wrote: post #87
btilly wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a vulnerability is found in open source code, people will try it on yours. So they won't be finding it directly in yours, but that is not protecting you. The real consequence is that how secure a product is depends more on the project than on whether it is open source. Apache and OpenBSD are two examples of very good open source code. Java and Rails are two examples of not so good open source code. Google's websit…

I get that there are different levels of quality regardless of the type of code. I was more interested in the security effects of hiding code after the open source community has had a chance to deal with vulnerabilities. None of the examples you gave were specific to code which has transitioned between open to closed. What I've gotten from your answer so far is that it isn't an effect which is general, and it'll depe…

Yes. Opening closed code is always going to be problematic. But closing opened code can go either way.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#143

Post by fencepost »

ejdyksen wrote: post #135
josteink wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works until "everyone" takes your advice and switches to 5ghz.

Not necessary. The 5ghz band has a lot more channels available (21 in the US), and all of those are 20mhz wide with no overlap. You would have to live in an extremely dense apartment building to start to run into interference issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

5 GHz also effectively has a shorter range than 2.4 GHz, particularly with building materials in the way. That gives more available capacity, and even without that it's likely to be at least another year before 5 GHz becomes standard in consumer laptops, plus most people aren't going to be replacing existing equipment immediately.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#144

Post by dasil003 »

mbreese wrote: post #27
illuminate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"being the "iPhone of home networking"" Howso? All I remember from their heyday was that they were good enough, cheap enough, and flashable. I don't remember them commanding a premium for any particular reason.

I think they meant it not in terms of a premium price, but rather as the default product to buy. They were never that much more expensive (if at all), but back in the day it was the one most people bought.

Should have said iPod then as I don't think iPhone ever attained "default" status outside of SF.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#145

Post by Ziomislaw »

xmodem wrote: post #120
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Mikrotik/RouterOS device. Positives: Cheap. Powerful. Stable. Negatives: Harder to use than OpenWRT/DD-WRT or similar. It is still a web-interface, but doesn't "baby" the user. If you aren't comfortable manually setting up interfaces and then setting up tunnels through those interfaces for example then skip this. I love it. But I won't kid myself, it isn't for everyone. The documentation isn't comprehensive…

Anyone who has ever set up a Cisco router to do anything even slightly complex should be able to pick up Mikrotik in a snap. The windows based GUI configuration tool (winbox) is simply incredible. (Runs fine in wine on OSX as well)

they rewrote it into a browser based app, looks identically, just a bit more shiny.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#146

Post by TylerE »

kragen wrote: post #124
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idle power consumption, measured at the plug by a watt meter: Dell Optiplex (1.4GHz Pentium III): 32W ($5.76/month @ $0.25/KWh) Mac Mini (1.25GHz G4): 17W ($3.06/month @ $0.25/KWh) Even if a WRT54G uses zero watts, you're still talking about a year before you even recover the $50 cost of one, and in any event ~$50/year is not a very expensive hobby.

A one-year payback time means an IRR (hope I'm using that term right!) of 100%. If you're choosing between putting your money into paying down your mortgage at 6%, investing in the stock market at 3% (plus or minus enormous volatility), insulating your house at 20%, or replacing your old PC router with a cheap MIPS box at 100%, go for the cheap MIPS box!

That's assuming you paid $0 for hardware, and your time is worth nothing.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#147

Post by kragen »

TylerE wrote: post #146
kragen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one-year payback time means an IRR (hope I'm using that term right!) of 100%. If you're choosing between putting your money into paying down your mortgage at 6%, investing in the stock market at 3% (plus or minus enormous volatility), insulating your house at 20%, or replacing your old PC router with a cheap MIPS box at 100%, go for the cheap MIPS box!

That's assuming you paid $0 for hardware, and your time is worth nothing.

No, it takes the cost of the router into account. The cost of the now-turned-off PC is immaterial; it's a sunk cost. (Although maybe freeing it up from router duty will make it more valuable since you can, e.g., sell it.)

It's true that it doesn't take the value of your time into account.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#149

Post by drakaal »

btilly wrote: post #70
drakaal wrote: post #66

OpenSource is a vulnerability not an Asset according to #5. For small projects which few contributors I would agree but, for projects as large as OpenWRT and DDWRT and such, I don't agree.

In an ideal world, whether code is open source is neutral. The extra ease of finding bugs is balanced by the fact that people can and do find then fix them. Theory says that these two are, to first order, equivalent. So end user security is the same. (But code quality tends to be higher with open source software.) However whenever code moves towards being more open, you've got all of the vulnerabilities of closed sou…

"Code quality is higher on open source"

Right, because somehow people not being paid to work on code right better since they are doing it for their pride, where as closed source people just lose their jobs if they write crappy code

Open Source with wide adoption leads to bugs being fixed.

Closed source security through obscurity leads to exploits being only known by those exploiting them. Not a good thing.

Re: Don't use Linksys routers

#150

Post by dhughes »

ansible wrote: post #118
dhughes wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If possible increase the transmit output milliwatts, to "shout over" the other signals on the same channel. Increase the beacon period of your router/AP to the fastest it will go, usually 20 microseconds. I think this is the best solution of anything you could try. Maybe play around with the DTIM interval but I'm not sure what a good number for that is; too low supposedly drains batteries of wireless devices and too…

I actually design wireless devices for a living and in my opinion, this is mostly bad advice. The best bet it to switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices. Option B is to turn off the higher speed modes like 802.11n. Just try to stick with 11g. If you are still having connection problems, maybe switch down to 11b, but that will be real slow even when it works. If you use an access point wit…

I've had great success adjusting the beacon period to 20 milliseconds and using 2.4GHz.

Although I do agree with your advice about channels I often get relatives to do that as they first step in troubleshooting problems with their home wireless network.

People have all those adjustable router options they may as well try something rather than default settings. You don't have to design wireless devices for a living to fiddle with a few settings.

Post reply on HN