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0 pointsatombender10y ago0 comments

I'm using a $50 Mikrotik hAP AC Lite (RB952Ui-5ac2nD-US) as a home router. It's not the most high-powered router — it only has a single 5GHz radio, no antenna, and the Ethernet port is 10/100 only — but it's stunningly solid.

Previously I had, over the span of 18 months, an ASUS "Dark Knight" (whose 5GHz network slowly faded and then _disappeared_, apparently a known issue), an ASUS RT-AC66U (frequently just choked, requiring a reboot), an a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (same, and also issues with unstable wifi).

By contrast, the Mikrotik has been rock stable for the time I've had it (6 months). I also love the WebFig UI. It's a lot more technical than consumer routers, but it's responsive, consistent and doesn't hide any technical details from me. I don't need 90% of the RouterOS features, but I know that if I needed something obscure, I could set it up. You basically get an industrial-quality Linux-based router/switch OS for almost nothing.

(I do like the fine-grained metrics, though. You can get bandwith and connection data not just per interface, but also per NAT rule, for example.)

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5 comments · 3 top-level

sathackr10y ago· 2 in thread

I cut my teeth at an "ISP" that would order a business DSL line at a MDU/Apartment complex, run it through a Linksys router, then over the phone wiring using 2-wire "HomePNA" devices and charge each person $30/month for the service.

The routers locked up so much they had one of those plug-in timers [1] set to reboot the router each night during their 'daily maintenance period'. They wouldn't even dispatch someone to do it when they started getting calls.

[1] http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-15153-GE-Mechanical-24-Hour-1-O...

atombenderOP10y ago

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on HN.

sathackr10y ago

I left after about 6 months. This was around 2001.

They also got in trouble with the LEC(and law enforcement) for using the LEC copper to interconnect their equipment between buildings. It was a common practice for them to tone out pairs in a neighborhood and patch their own wires in using the LEC's boxes and wiring.

They are no longer in business.

zippergz10y ago

Yes, this reliability is why I don't use consumer network hardware when I can avoid it. I got sick of getting calls from my wife when I was traveling and she was trying to work from home but the wireless had stopped working again.

My home network is all Ubiquiti, and is also rock solid. The 10/100 ethernet port is what actually pushed me to move from my Cisco ASA to a Ubiquiti router - the router had become the bottleneck in my internet connection.

blacksmith_tb10y ago

Agreed - I'm using a Mikrotik hAP AC at home now, after a series of disappointing high-end consumer devices (ASUS RT-AC3200 most recently). It isn't perfect (AC speeds are temperamental for me), but it does offer a huge amount of configurability - including a Cisco-esque CLI interface via SSH, which is nice.

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