In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It was just an idea, fed up with the naff routers I have here, well one is not naff it is pretty good to be honest but the Wi-fi is out of date.

If you’re using a free router from an ISP they’re made to a (low) price and dumbed down to make their helpdesk job easier.

On any replacement look at power consumption. You can buy routers without integrated WiFi, and with 1x 10GigE port, connect this to a 10GigE switch and buy Access Points that can serve WiFi 6 with 1.2 Gbps over the air or potentially faster.

Just depends what you want to pay.

Switching to a full PC hardware to run a router is ideal if you are interested in customising the packets, writing complex firewall rules, or just getting involved in networking.

Years ago I ran an elderly Pentium 133 with a Linux (Slackware distro) router and firewall. I swapped the HDD for an early SSD and quieted the fans, but eventually the power consumption and pain of keeping it patched and working was just more than I wanted (at home, as I do it for a job) and so I switched to an ASUS router.

The dedicated hardware and Broadcom ARM based CPUs are fast, and low power consumption. (E.g. 24watts, instead of 90+ watts, running constantly).

Completely up to you, but if you’re not interested in the Unix/Linux/BSD command line and understanding TCP packets, probably not the best direction for you.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

If you’re using a free router from an ISP they’re made to a (low) price and dumbed down to make their helpdesk job easier.

On any replacement look at power consumption. You can buy routers without integrated WiFi, and with 1x 10GigE port, connect this to a 10GigE switch and buy Access Points that can serve WiFi 6 with 1.2 Gbps over the air or potentially faster.

Just depends what you want to pay.

Switching to a full PC hardware to run a router is ideal if you are interested in customising the packets, writing complex firewall rules, or just getting involved in networking.

Years ago I ran an elderly Pentium 133 with a Linux (Slackware distro) router and firewall. I swapped the HDD for an early SSD and quieted the fans, but eventually the power consumption and pain of keeping it patched and working was just more than I wanted (at home, as I do it for a job) and so I switched to an ASUS router.

The dedicated hardware and Broadcom ARM based CPUs are fast, and low power consumption. (E.g. 24watts, instead of 90+ watts, running constantly).

Completely up to you, but if you’re not interested in the Unix/Linux/BSD command line and understanding TCP packets, probably not the best direction for you.

I realise they are made to a price, Plusnet gave me a Zyxel which is supposed to be a good one, but that went pop and had problems with the Wi-fi before it went pop.
As I said it was just an idea thinking maybe it would do a better job than pre-built routers.
I have looked at Asus routers, it makes me laugh when they stick gaming in the name, I think that is a gimmick oh yeah and this windows 11 ready LOL.

The RT-AX53U looks ok, it is just a router, no modem, I have a old openreach modem that works fine, so i could connect it to that and then if I do move to FTTP, it will be ok for that.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have looked at Asus routers, it makes me laugh when they stick gaming in the name, I think that is a gimmick oh yeah and this windows 11 ready LOL.

What else from the company that owns the ROG brand, they do have some additional gaming related modules which may help some people. I avoid the ROG (GT-xxx) ones.

The RT-AX53U looks ok, it is just a router, no modem, I have a old openreach modem that works fine, so i could connect it to that and then if I do move to FTTP, it will be ok for that.

Same with cable, I use an RT-AX88U with my Virgin Cable connection. The 53U is a 2x2 with 80MHz max, and the 88U is a 4x4 with upto 160MHz max. My work laptop supports the 160 MHz mode (all this on 5GHz). At some point I should try some speed tests, in theory its Gigabit over WiFi.

It was a shame Openreach stopped doing the ‘active NTE’ with VDSL/FTTC, as it would have got everyone ready for FTTP or cable.

Edited by jchamier (Tue 23-Aug-22 20:18:01)

You might be surprised how low power the mini PCs you can use for pfSense/Opnsense are.

I use a slightly older version of this PC https://www.mini-itx.com/~JBC430

It idles at under 5 watts.

Edited by andynormancx (Tue 23-Aug-22 20:30:49)

+1 for pfsense

I've been using pfSense since 2015, running on an ASRock, Intel cpu onboard, motherboard. Got fed up with "cheap" consumer modem routers (wouldn't say the ones I was using were cheap as I tended to purchase different ones than the ISP shipped) slowing down and needing to be reset every other day. The final straw was when one of those cheap modem routers completely stopped for 30 minutes after transferring 50GB across my network during a backup. I think it had a mini-meltdown

Moving to pfSense was a revelation. No more needing to reboot the device every other day, the ability to have fine grained control of firewall rules, vlans, vpns and multiple wan connections. I'd never go back to off the shelf* consumer routers.



* I've also got a few Ubiquiti devices but wouldn't replace my pfSense box with their Dream Machine because of the stability of pfSense. Knowing my luck Ubiquiti would discontinue updates on the DM if I bought one!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

What else from the company that owns the ROG brand, they do have some additional gaming related modules which may help some people. I avoid the ROG (GT-xxx) ones.

I have nopt had anything from Asus for years.


Same with cable, I use an RT-AX88U with my Virgin Cable connection. The 53U is a 2x2 with 80MHz max, and the 88U is a 4x4 with upto 160MHz max. My work laptop supports the 160 MHz mode (all this on 5GHz). At some point I should try some speed tests, in theory its Gigabit over WiFi.

It was a shame Openreach stopped doing the ‘active NTE’ with VDSL/FTTC, as it would have got everyone ready for FTTP or cable.



Active NTE?

i like Tp link routers and Argos have the TP-Link Archer AX55 for £85, plus I can get a 10% discount, 15% if i wait until Saturday.

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

You might be surprised how low power the mini PCs you can use for pfSense/Opnsense are.

I use a slightly older version of this PC https://www.mini-itx.com/~JBC430

It idles at under 5 watts.

a bit out of my price range to be honest, if I was younger, maybe.
It was just an idea to muck around with. I have an old I5 bits here, would muck around with that, but the board just beeps when turned on, it is memory, but I don't know why, changed it around and all that. If I can find some more memory here, I will have another go. Just a muck around. I bound to have some DDR3 somewhere.

The pfSense box I built to use at my office idles at 20W and peaked under a theoretical test load of 50W and handles 1Gbps from Openreach FTTP with ease.
It has the following specs:
AMD Athlon 200GE
8GB RAM
256GB NVMe SSD

Thanks
Dan

pfSense is great! Haven't used OPNSense yet, and probably won't as I don't have a reason to.

Before the prolonged power cut I have 2 days ago I had around 200days uptime, and another 200+days uptime before the update to 2.6. So stability-wise it's been rock solid for me.

Setup:
Modem - HG612 (yes this is still going c.2013)
Router - Dell Wyse 5070 Extended w/ Intel I350-T4 (6W idle:14W Fully Loaded)
Pentium J5005 2.8GHz
8GB DDR4
128GB m.2 Sata SSD
WiFi - UniFi AC Lite (Upgrading soon to U6 Lite)

It was just a thought, wi-fi is not a big thing for me, most of what I have on Wi-fi runs on 2.4ghz, it is only my phone that uses 5Ghz. that is why i was happy to use my old Tp link router. Someone on here I think said that I should be using it due to the Wi-fi standards.
The Hub one that Plusnet provided is awful, don't even get the Wi-fi signal outside the back. They provide a Zyxel as i was having problems with the broadband, so they thought the Zyxel would do a better job than the hub one. That went pop not so long ago, a mate fixed it, but it still have problems and to be honest the Wi-fi on it was not great.

So at the moment I am using the old hub one, i have a Huawei HG612 modem, I replaced it when my old ECI stopped connecting, which was what started all the problem I had broadband wise.

i was thinking of a second hand P.C, something like a Lenovo,,, but it will have to have space in to put at least a second network adaptor in.
I will have a peak around and make up my mind.
I do know i need to get rid of the hub one.