Roll your own. m0n0wall or smoothwall just needs an old PC with 2 nics. Faster, more stable and more features. Past that, you just need a switch. Super easy to admin and very very stable.

lordargent: Gig103: Well, now that I can't buy new Linksys routers, even though I used them for over a decade, any suggestions by the Fark community?

You can still buy WRT54GLs and flash them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-124-190

The price keeps creeping up though. Wait until they're on sale (I bought three over the years for between $50-$65). My oldest one is about 7 years old I think.

I got a refurb one from newegg recently for $30. Works great.

lappyx86: Roll your own. m0n0wall or smoothwall just needs an old PC with 2 nics. Faster, more stable and more features. Past that, you just need a switch. Super easy to admin and very very stable.

I may be doing this tonight. A friend of mine has a nettop he doesn't use and it may be perfect as a low power linux router.

Slam Dunkz: Gig103: Well, now that I can't buy new Linksys routers, even though I used them for over a decade, any suggestions by the Fark community? Netgear?

I've been using various SMC stuff since the late '90s. They've been rock solid for me every time I've gotten one.

I had an SMC 8012 (or 8013, I forget) on my Comcast business circuit. Talk about a festering pile of dog shiat. If you were using it as a NAT gateway, any heavy traffic loads would tank it requiring a power-cycle. Put it into bridge mode & used my 1811 as the NAT edge router and never looked back.

Also made life easier when I kicked Comcast to the curb and got Centurylink, I didn't have to do any BS renumbering.

zarberg: Ok, try not to be too judgemental, but I bought an Apple Airport Extreme

Aren't those things like $120?

I suppose the USB ports are nice, but I already have a computer to hook an external drive up to.

// And people have modded USB ports onto the GS (which makes you wonder why they didn't slap them on there in the first place).

Another thing that I always found curious is how they try to sell their single antenna, single port bridge for more than their router.

When you can buy the router, flash it, and have a dual antenna bridge with five ports.

At the risk of flamage, Apple's AirPort Extremes are very, very good. Easy as all get out to set up quickly, but has plenty of advanced options if you look for them.

http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/

This. This made my day. No need to read the rest of the article, someone at engadget is awesome.

Gig103: Well, now that I can't buy new Linksys routers, even though I used them for over a decade, any suggestions by the Fark community? Netgear?

Asus N56ULink A midrange router I bought for 170, but it's priced at 130 now.

The UI is sweet, the UPnP is simple, so are the dual band settings. Plugged in a Synology NAS to it, and it streams my own personal cloud network just great. (I refuse to go actual cloud)

I swear this is not a placeholder for later when I get home and pull out 3-4 WRT's which are gathering dust in a hall closet to test out DD-WRT. Nope. Not. A. Placeholder.

FinFangFark: Gig103: Well, now that I can't buy new Linksys routers, even though I used them for over a decade, any suggestions by the Fark community? Netgear?

Asus N56ULink A midrange router I bought for 170, but it's priced at 130 now.

The UI is sweet, the UPnP is simple, so are the dual band settings. Plugged in a Synology NAS to it, and it streams my own personal cloud network just great. (I refuse to go actual cloud)

Looks nice. I may get one. Does it support multiple WAN ip addresses? I have four statics and my disposal.

Also

♫
Cant you hear me lockin, down your router
Cant you hear me lockin, down your ports
Cant you hear me lockin, down your dirty tcp, yeah
♫

Anyone want to hazard that Cisco is just acting on order from DHS? Or is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

HempHead: Anyone want to hazard that Cisco is just acting on order from DHS? Or is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

I would think they'd be doing it without any notification if that were the case.

Honest Bender: Linux_Yes: Cisco is the most reliable for LAN and enterprise I've ever seen, with the most features for administration, management and monitoring.

Maybe the best you've seen

Cisco is absolutely the best router in the world.

Wrong.

Foundry, biatches. Foundry.

Foundry was absorbed by Brocade, but yeah, so far they're still good. I'm not completely pleased with their multicast routing, but I'm not in a position to compare it to Cisco.

Honest Bender: They did do it without any notification. That was a large part of the problem.

I guess I was a bit confusing, I didn't mean prior warning - they did what they did without that. But they did technically notify;

FTA:

To make matters worse, the Connect Cloud service came with a supplemental privacy policy that explicitly allowed Cisco to peek at a user's "internet history," "traffic" and "other related information.

If it was some shady cloak-and-dagger scheme, they wouldn't even have put in that privacy policy. Jeeze, I'd like to think that if the government wanted to do something like that they'd send back occasional packets with info on where you're surfing and disguise them as the router looking for updates.

Read about this last week, and had the same disconnect issues on my old Linksys router mentioned earlier in the thread. Just got my new Asus RT-N16 router and flashed with Toastman firmware last night. Holy crap, I never knew what I was missing out on.

nvmac: Dinki: I bought a couple of the cisco/linksys routers after the merger. They were shiat. The wireless will randomly stop working, or the whole thing will simply hang. Never buying a cisco product again.

/the old linksys stuff was great.

//Cisco business class routers/firewall/switches are overpriced garbage too.

Really?

Been managing Cisco devices for 15 years, also worked on HP, Linksys (pre and post Cisco), Juniper, and Avaya.

Cisco is the most reliable for LAN and enterprise I've ever seen, with the most features for administration, management and monitoring.

Overpriced? Agree.

Garbage? Do not agree.

Belkin is garbage. Never managed one that worked right.

Airlink is another shiat one. We had an Airlink wireless router that somehow made all our printers take 15 minutes to print out a page. That was a lot of fun.

Jormungandr: nvmac: Dinki: I bought a couple of the cisco/linksys routers after the merger. They were shiat. The wireless will randomly stop working, or the whole thing will simply hang. Never buying a cisco product again.

/the old linksys stuff was great.

//Cisco business class routers/firewall/switches are overpriced garbage too.

Really?

Been managing Cisco devices for 15 years, also worked on HP, Linksys (pre and post Cisco), Juniper, and Avaya.

Cisco is the most reliable for LAN and enterprise I've ever seen, with the most features for administration, management and monitoring.

Overpriced? Agree.

Garbage? Do not agree.

Belkin is garbage. Never managed one that worked right.

Airlink is another shiat one. We had an Airlink wireless router that somehow made all our printers take 15 minutes to print out a page. That was a lot of fun.

I remember airlinks when I used to shop at Frys. My brother bought their USB adapters...talk about utter crap. I was skeptical about the Asus networking equipment, but it's all been great to me so far.

I also bought a Motorola surfboard DOCSIS 3 modem so I don't have to lease from Comcast, and all that combined, my home network streams great to all my devices...though I had to adjust the download master settings on the router b/c it was saving directly to the USB drive and NAS, and that was causing buffering issues while people were streaming the home media. I save my torrents locally, then move over at a later time the NAS is not in use.

Lor M. Ipsum: Generation_D: the Connect Cloud service came with a supplemental privacy policy that explicitly allowed Cisco to peek at a user's "internet history," "traffic" and "other related information." If Cisco discovered you had used your router for "pornographic or offensive purposes" or to violate "intellectual property rights," it reserved the right to shut down your cloud account and effectively cut you off from your router.

If this is true, never buying Cisco for home or office again.

Cutting users off from porn? This does not bode well for Cisco.

I wonder if its possible that the MPAA/RIAA goons are going a new route (har har) here. Get to the hardware manufacturers and rope them into their nefarious schemes.

zarberg: Ok, try not to be too judgemental, but I bought an Apple Airport Extreme and I absolutely love it. It's got 2 USB ports, one I've plugged a 2 TB hard drive into that I can access from any machine on my network and the other has a printer that is automatically networked. Setting up port forwarding is nice and easy.

I got one two years ago after getting fed up with the Belkin router randomly freezing up. Outstanding piece of equipment. Been running great since.

nvmac: Lor M. Ipsum: Generation_D: Cisco apparently never read Routergod. Or believes that a network at home is sort of like a privacy boundary

I have a feeling that the article could be exaggerating. A router should be able to act as a standalone device, like hosting a private LAN. If Cisco decentralizes administrative access of the router onto the Internet, how would administrating a private network even be possible?

CIsco's official response:Link

Engadget article could be misleading. More to come I'm sure.

/slashies

Cisco's response is utter bullshiat. It doesn't respond to the actual complaint.

From their TOS:

As a condition of your use of the Service, you agree that your use of the Service in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement is permitted under and will comply with the applicable laws of the country where you use the Service. You agree not to use or permit the use of the Service: (i) to invade another's privacy; (ii) for obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes; (iii) to infringe another's rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights; (iv) to upload, email or otherwise transmit or make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, spam, junk mail or any other form of solicitation; (v) to transmit or otherwise make available any code or virus, or perform any activity, that could harm or interfere with any device, software, network or service (including this Service); or (vi) to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.

While we are not responsible for any content or data that you choose to access or otherwise use in connection with the Service, we reserve the right to take such action as we (i) deem necessary or (ii) are otherwise required to take by a third party or court of competent jurisdiction, in each case in relation to your access or use or misuse of such content or data. Such action may include, without limitation, discontinuing your use of the Service immediately without prior notice to you, and without refund or compensation to you.

You will indemnify and hold us and Cisco Systems Inc. and its affiliates harmless against any claims, losses or damages arising from any threatened, repudiatory or actual breach by you of the covenants set out in this Section.

Link

So, if you like to view porn, like to steal your porn, or try to set up your own porn, Cisco, at their own discretion, will essentially brick your router. And fark you on getting a refund you porn loving hippy.

zarberg: f it was some shady cloak-and-dagger scheme, they wouldn't even have put in that privacy policy. Jeeze, I'd like to think that if the government wanted to do something like that they'd send back occasional packets with info on where you're surfing and disguise them as the router looking for updates.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was not the DHS, but rather Cisco's legal team put the clause in to cover their butts.

With the new NAS data center going online in Utah, the government no longer want to get the occasional packet, they want all of them.

Oh Cisco!

KierzanDax: nvmac: Lor M. Ipsum: Generation_D: Cisco apparently never read Routergod. Or believes that a network at home is sort of like a privacy boundary

I have a feeling that the article could be exaggerating. A router should be able to act as a standalone device, like hosting a private LAN. If Cisco decentralizes administrative access of the router onto the Internet, how would administrating a private network even be possible?

CIsco's official response:Link

Engadget article could be misleading. More to come I'm sure.

/slashies

Cisco's response is utter bullshiat. It doesn't respond to the actual complaint.

From their TOS:

As a condition of your use of the Service, you agree that your use of the Service in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement is permitted under and will comply with the applicable laws of the country where you use the Service. You agree not to use or permit the use of the Service: (i) to invade another's privacy; (ii) for obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes; (iii) to infringe another's rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights; (iv) to upload, email or otherwise transmit or make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, spam, junk mail or any other form of solicitation; (v) to transmit or otherwise make available any code or virus, or perform any activity, that could harm or interfere with any device, software, network or service (including this Service); or (vi) to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.

While we are not responsible for any content or data that you choose to access or otherwise use in connection with the Service, we reserve the right to take such action as we (i) deem necessary or (ii) are otherwise required to take by a third party or court of competent jurisdiction, in each case in relation to your access or use or misuse of such content or data ...

That's referencing their cloud management service, not the router itself. It's most likely a template privacy policy, as Babwa Wawa suggested, as I'm not sure how you'd use a cloud router management service for porn...

*shakes fist at cmunic8r99*

Tales of Cisco-induced semi-psychotic fits are common. Often, people on a Cisco binge end up curled into a fetal ball, shuddering and muttering paranoid rants. Nudity and violence may well be involved too.

Yeah, I know, different Cisco.

Anyway, after years of my WRT54Gv2 working ultra-reliably with DD-WRT, I decided I wanted 802.11n and got a couple of refurbed Netgear WNDR3300 units (which I also flashed with DD-WRT). I'm hanging on to the old WRT, though, as there's nothing wrong with it. What's nice about a lot of the newer units (WNDR3300 included) is that they have two radios, so you can isolate traffic or provide a guest network. I have one WNDR3300 running in bridge mode upstairs and connected to my MythTV setup via the N link, and the downstairs unit hooked to the cable modem. The downstairs G link handles general-purpose wireless through the house.

I'm glad I didn't get suckered into this Cloud Connect Crap. Indeed, anytime I see the word "cloud" with some whizbang new service I take it as a sign to run like hell from it.

I think the issue was forcing people to use the Cloud service if they wanted firmware updates for their routers. So if you didn't want to agree to the Cloud service or its terms, you were SOL b/c you couldn't get upgrades or support for a wonky router/firmware otherwise.

Babwa Wawa: I don't have an airport, but it's not just a router. It's a router, NAS, print server, and airplay server. If you use even two of those things that stuff, it's worth the money. If you use it for three of those things, it's a bargain. If all you use it for is routing, it's a rip-off.


Is the storage built into it? If not, then I think DD-WRT has modules for all of that stuff (except for airplay).

// I just wanted a router :D

// I think even with all of those features, it should be cheaper. Like $100 or so. Adding those additional features is mostly a software thing so shouldn't double the price of a device IMO (even though it is a better deal than buying those devices individually).

// Still ticked off that I bought 2 WET11s at $70 a pop about 12 years ago (before I knew about DD-WRT). So I look very carefully at the true value of hardware/software these days.

Cisco has had to eat crow on a lot of what they brought under their umbrella in the buying spree. They tried mightily to access the consumer market and failed repeatedly. They just don't get it that they can't do to consumers what they can do to enterprise customers and their VARs. They are awesome but still overpriced in the enterprise market. Tthat's their core business and where they should stay.

Methinks that their war with HP isn't going as well as they like and they're getting more competition in the switching market than they're comfortable with. Let's face it, Adtran has switches, routers, and wireless that will do what most people in the small business market need for half the price.

When you're getting your lunch eaten in your core business, you panic. I think that's what this is, superimposing a top-down post-sale support model in an arena where it just doesn't work. You can push people with a million dollars worth of your equipment running their business. You can't when it costs roughly 80 bucks to replace your product entirely.

All the talk of OpenWRT and DD-WRT (excellent distros) makes me want to chime in, no matter how late to the party I might be.

I cast my vote in favour of pfSense on mini-ITX rigs. Enterprise class firewall / router Free-BSD distro. I have acted as a cheerleader for this for the last couple of years and have brought several of my Network Engineer colleagues into the light. I am proud to report that I have costed Cisco a ton of business by having pfSense deployed on HP ProLiant hardware where big ASA / PIX, and router deployments would normally have happened. The fact that you can perform CARP failover, redundant WAN connections, and can acquire enterprise support for peanuts (often a requirement of company policies) makes pfSense a no-brainer.

Well, now I'm ashamed to have recently recommended their gear to a friend of mine looking for a wireless home router.

I won't be doing that again.

nvmac: Dinki: I bought a couple of the cisco/linksys routers after the merger. They were shiat. The wireless will randomly stop working, or the whole thing will simply hang. Never buying a cisco product again.

/the old linksys stuff was great.

//Cisco business class routers/firewall/switches are overpriced garbage too.

Really?

Been managing Cisco devices for 15 years, also worked on HP, Linksys (pre and post Cisco), Juniper, and Avaya.

Cisco is the most reliable for LAN and enterprise I've ever seen, with the most features for administration, management and monitoring.

Overpriced? Agree.

Garbage? Do not agree.

Belkin is garbage. Never managed one that worked right.

I've never had a Linksys router work properly for me. I returned one three times under warranty because the damn thing would randomly drop signal, even when I was in the same room as it. The response I got? It was operating under normal parameters.

Belkin, on the other hand, has never dropped signal or had any issues, even after running constantly for five years. The Linksys couldn't go five hours without needing to be reset.

I wouldn't waste money on Linksys. Sure, they used to be good, but that was a long, long time ago back when Leading Edge made computers and Civ1 was the best game on the market.

/Linksys also overheats like no tomorrow
//in a 40F environment
/can't believe they're still charging the prices they are for their crap

My first ever router was an old PII box I tossed a copy of FreeBSD on and slapped an extra NIC in. It's really as simple as enabling IP forwarding and creating two routes. It eventually grew to include a relatively complex set of firewall rules, a copy of djbdns operating as a cache (at the time, Adelphia had absolutely shiat DNS servers so it was nice to not have to worry about them or use somebody else's) and sshd so I could manage it all with PuTTY. I credit a lot of my early learning about networks and system management to that "router".

By far the most reliable router I ever owned.

Meanwhile, I now have a $40 WNR2000v3 and it's an absolute piece of shiat and I hope everybody employed at Netgear burns in hell for it. The wireless radio just shuts off for no apparent reason at random times. Sometimes heavy use, sometimes light, sometimes at two in the motherfarking morning when nobody is using it.

Piece of crap. SOHO routers aren't really that complex of devices, why can't these companies release one that works?

Ubiquiti makes really nice, modestly priced routers and access points...

FinFangFark: Jormungandr: nvmac: Dinki: I bought a couple of the cisco/linksys routers after the merger. They were shiat. The wireless will randomly stop working, or the whole thing will simply hang. Never buying a cisco product again.

/the old linksys stuff was great.

//Cisco business class routers/firewall/switches are overpriced garbage too.

Really?

Been managing Cisco devices for 15 years, also worked on HP, Linksys (pre and post Cisco), Juniper, and Avaya.

Cisco is the most reliable for LAN and enterprise I've ever seen, with the most features for administration, management and monitoring.

Overpriced? Agree.

Garbage? Do not agree.

Belkin is garbage. Never managed one that worked right.

Airlink is another shiat one. We had an Airlink wireless router that somehow made all our printers take 15 minutes to print out a page. That was a lot of fun.

I remember airlinks when I used to shop at Frys. My brother bought their USB adapters...talk about utter crap. I was skeptical about the Asus networking equipment, but it's all been great to me so far.

I also bought a Motorola surfboard DOCSIS 3 modem so I don't have to lease from Comcast, and all that combined, my home network streams great to all my devices...though I had to adjust the download master settings on the router b/c it was saving directly to the USB drive and NAS, and that was causing buffering issues while people were streaming the home media. I save my torrents locally, then move over at a later time the NAS is not in use.

Motorola Surfboards are pretty decent over all. I hated the " turn off the internet" standby button they had on top for awhile. I was working internet tech support and many times people had just bumped the admittedly reeally sensitive button. But yeah, fark Airlink right in their ears.

Dalek Caan's doomed mistress:
Belkin is garbage. Never managed one that worked right.

I've never had a Linksys router work properly for me. I returned one three times under warranty because the damn thing would randomly drop signal, even when I was in the same room as it. The response I got? It was operating under normal parameters.

Belkin, on the other hand, has never dropped signal or had any issues, even after running constantly for five years. The Linksys couldn't go five hours without needing to be reset.

I wouldn't waste money on Linksys. Sure, they used to be good, but that was a long, long time ago back when Leading Edge made computers and Civ1 was the best game on the market.

/Linksys also overheats like no tomorrow
//in a 40F environment
/can't believe they're still charging the prices they are for their crap

Belkin is not immune to this crap either. A while back, every 8 hours, their routers redirected users to a page offering content filter software. Story.

ill be back

HP Pro Curve. I don't have a huge amount of experience with them, but they've been dead reliable and they run cool.

ChubbyTiger: HP Pro Curve. I don't have a huge amount of experience with them, but they've been dead reliable and they run cool.

Procurve is great for businesses, absolutely. Lifetime next day advance-replacement warranty on the bulk of their products. But probably overkill for home user.