Running Linux?<p>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.<p>And, as for:<p>"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 internet bandwidth to download the Lord Of The Rings Special Extended Edition in 1080p HDTV format."<p>Nmap is your friend. Find the offending port and flood it. Since the local connection is always quicker than the Internet connection, it's easy to do. I've done this countless times, and only to those torrenting. At one cafe I use to frequent I would just start scanning whenever this one guy came in. I wonder if he ever developed a negative Pavlovian response to seeing me at the cafe and his torrenting success.<p>Do I feel guilty about basically DoS? Really, no. If someone tries to take control of a limited resource... shit is going to happen.
I posted this "Ask HN" awhile back about my desire to pay for a router-as-a-service:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160585" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160585</a><p>What surprised me was the number of responses along the lines of "you don't need this -- just install DD-WRT, OpenWRT, whatever and configure the foo,bar, and baz features as such." I'm likely in the 99th percentile of the US population in my ability to do such a thing, and I still have to spend a bunch of time Googling. Worse yet, I don't have the certainty at the end that I've done it right.
As I commented here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4082351" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4082351</a><p>The part of Tomato I like best is its simple DNS interface that lets you have one hosts file that is shared across all the machines connected to it. This is where I define my local dev domains so that I can test across devices that don't allow local host file changes (namely non-jailbroken iOS devices).
No mention of Mikrotik? I picked up a RB750GL last week, and so far, it's everything DD-WRT/Tomato/etc wish they could be. It works as a basic plug-and-play router, but it's incredibly flexible beyond that.<p>Check out <a href="http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features</a> if you're interested. You can download the OS and run it in a VM if you want to give it a try before purchasing.
One thing Jeff didn't mention is that due to the high CPU and RAM in that ASUS router, you can be downloading several different torrents and the internet experience in general won't be degraded.<p>With my Verizon FIOS's router, if I try to torrent anything it gets throttled down to less than 10KB/s, and on my old Linksys, attempting to torrent would make browsing the internet nearly impossible.
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 ISP provided and don't allow me to control DNS.
I'd pick a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, or -AG300N rather than either ASUS he picked. Both ship with DD-WRT preinstalled, and full source of the firmware is available.<p>The older ASUS routers are stuck on Linux 2.4.x permanently in OpenWRT (which DD-WRT and Tomato are derived from) because of proprietary Wifi or Ethernet drivers or firmware blobs and poor CPU support.
Just as a data point on the Tomato firmware. I've been running it for about 2 years now, on two different hardware devices. It hangs every once in a while, the intervals range from several days to several weeks. I determined the culprit is QoS: if I disable all QoS, the device will run fine for months. Enabling it shortens the uptime to days or weeks at most.<p>Since I know this happens reproducibly on two different devices, I am certain it is the software. And unfortunately without QoS the Tomato firmware loses much of its appeal.<p>Unfortunately this is one of those "unreportable" bugs: there is no way to properly report it, much less have it debugged by original developers.
Really? I didn't expect to find a "consumer device roundup" article (along with sidebar ads and referral tags for the products being reviewed) to rate so highly on HN, even if the reviewer is Jeff Atwood. I doubt that flashing custom firmware on a router or QoS settings are a new concept to anyone on here.<p>All I'm gaining by reading the article is some knowledge on some consumer electronics that will probably no longer be valid in a couple weeks, which IMO is not HN-material. These types of articles are best served by Google results when I'm actually looking for a new router, not on my HN feed.<p>What's next, "how to build a computer?"
I disagree with the router recommendation. The Asus RT-N16 uses a Broadcom chipset which isn't well-supported by OpenWRT. Better choices would be something with an Atheros chipset, like the Netgear WNDR3700v2 or WNDR3800. Buffalo also has some nice models. Even if you don't plan to use OpenWRT itself, it's a base used by other firmware projects, so you might want to run a derivative of it in the future.<p><a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start</a>
I don't mean to shill, but after trying all kinds of Netgear, Linksys and ADSL Modem/router combi's, I really love my Apple Airport Extreme. I haven't had to reset it once in two years, and it's every bit as fast and reliable as a wired connection. They are sold as tag-on purchases but really are a hidden gem.
<3 this. I've preaching this for the past year ever since I discovered the amazing combination of the 8yr-old Linksys WRT54GL [1][2] + Tomato SpeedMod firmware [3]. Amazing how that router still dominates the ratings of all routers, both in terms of numbers and average rating, and there are still more ratings trickling in almost daily.<p>Also, I don't know if SpeedMod has been merged back into mainline Tomato or not, but it's worked flawlessly on my WRT54GL for almost a year now.<p>I completely agree with Jeff's conclusion as well - commodity hardware + FOSS = potentially unbeatable. FOSS that has had a chance to literally evolve on the same platform for almost a decade, assuming it hasn't been abandoned, can really demonstrate the power of software evolution, for lack of better term.<p>1. <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124190" rel="nofollow">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124...</a><p>2. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband-Router/dp/B000BTL0OA/ref=sr_1_1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broad...</a><p>3. <a href="http://touristinparadise.blogspot.com/2008/04/linksys-wrt54gl-routers-improving.html" rel="nofollow">http://touristinparadise.blogspot.com/2008/04/linksys-wrt54g...</a>
I'm running this same setup - same router, same firmware.<p>I'm using the MultiSSID functionality (so I have my home wireless network, and a heavily throttled guest network), QoS (basically what Jeff wrote about), VPN (so I can be assured of a secure connection while on the road, and have effective LAN access via TAP), as well as all the standard stuff. It tickles me a bit that I'm getting a featureset for $80 that you'd have to pay several hundred for to get it out of the box.
Draytek Vigor. My go to router of choice. built in vpn from the off, so you can drop in these bad boys and then (once set up) auto route all your traffic that looks as if it should go to the remote site TO the remote site. Easy to vpn back "home" if you are out and about. QOS built in. VOIP server built in to the higher version. They are as cheap as a typical router but they pack the punch of any router out there. ... unless someone can tell me why not ?
I have been running the RT-N16 + TomatoUSB for a couple of years now.<p>Pros:<p>- Hard to brick, easy to revert an f'ed up flash<p>- 5-6mo uptimes (most stable consumer router I've owned at least)<p>- Tracks network usage, attractive graphs<p>- Easy to add local DNS entries for your systems<p>- Improves DNS performance with a transparent DNS proxy (dnsmasq)
(e.g. you can have it query all servers at once, and return record from the first server to respond)<p>- Easy to use port forwarding rules<p>- Attach a USB HD to it to act as a NAS (smb/ftp/dlna, nfs possible with unfsd)<p>- Setup a full pxeboot enviroment with it, including a shared nfs root!<p>- Run tcpdump to troubleshoot network issues!<p>- Runs most openwrt packages<p>Cons:<p>- Sensitive to heat (90f days will cause it to crash, only reason I've had to reboot it though)<p>- Doesn't always mount my USB thumb drive at boot (poor USB connection?)<p>- Not fast enough to stream 1024p HD over wifi<p>- Limited internal flash, I store my utils (e.g. tcpdump, nmap) on my USB thumb drive<p>- TomatoUSB doesn't appear to be maintained anymore :(
In France, this need have been killed by the ISP themself. Is there any ISP in the US who does that ?<p>Free (a ISP) started in 2002. It's a home-made modem router, who also does TV and Phone. Since that almost all others French ISP have created their *box (Livebox, BBox, AliceBox, Neufbox, …).
A few months ago I researched how to install open-source router firmware.<p>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.<p>Their responses shocked me:
<a href="http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=681593" rel="nofollow">http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=681593</a><p>I'm probably not going to install dd-wrt.
I dont know what enabling QoS means on routers: is it traffic shaping or using QoS code points. Traffic shapping should be possible but I am not a strong believer of middleboxes tampering doing this (they probably dont have enough context to do it right). I'd rather have the applications or the browser or the kernel of the endpoint do this. For the latter this is kinda impossible because the QoS are ISP-specific and the application or middlebox should be aware of the them. Since there is no global solution or generic DSCP codepoints using them is not possible, however, there are some proposals in works to make generic marking possible.<p>The routers can enable WRED to mitigate some congestion problems, though it is not the silver bullet and works on a per-flow basis. Some new solutions to solve the buffer bloat problems is to install the experimental CeroWRT firmware in your routers (<a href="http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt" rel="nofollow">http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt</a>), however, this is also a work in progress.
I have been burned by so many routers in the past few years. It is amazing how terrible the factory firmware is on these machines. For most of them I have had to install DD-WRT just to get them working. Thank the flying spaghetti monster for open source.<p>But what I dont understand is why hardware manufactures go out of there way to prevent external software from being installed.
I don't know. I am going to keep on hoping that I will be able get by with the router built into my DSL modem when I switch from cable to DSL. Or that I can use ethernet to get my Mac mini on the net while using the mini's Wifi to create an ad-hoc wireless network to get the iPad I plan to buy on the net. Or that I will build a Linux box and the motherboard will have wifi onboard. Or that I will build a Linux box and there is a cheap PCI card I can add to it to get all the ethernet ports I will ever need.<p>Point is that I want to avoid adding yet another box to my home -- especially if the box is <i>plastic</i> rather than metal and requires its own external AC adapter like the first of the OP's buying recommendations does.
Do any of these have built-in VPN? And which services can I use it with?<p>I'd like to be able to configure a VPN at the router, and not have to think about whether the software is compatible with, installed in and used by all the software on my devices. Any suggestions?
While DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato are great for home and small office, I doubt most people would feel comfortable running them in a datacenter. We are fans of Sonicwall appliances, they provide a nice combinator of price, features, and performance.
I'm done with routers. Totally fed up of them running out of RAM, taking too long to open new connections, not being able to open more connections if someone is using 200 to torrent, fed up of them forgetting static IP assignments, port forwards, upnp never working...<p>I got fed up of all that and decided to do something about it. Routers have 8, 16mb of RAM? My worst computer that's lying around has 256mb. Slap another ethernet card in, install iptables, it's one day's work tops and your router will never crash and never forget anything again. My personal best is 7,000 torrents all going at once with the internet still being fairly usable.
My best router is Lynksys WRT54GL with Tomato Victek.
Now i can:<p>- Limit dw/up by ip/mac<p>- QoS<p>- VPN (with Open VPN)<p>- Web sniffer (i can see url history)<p>and much more...<p><a href="http://victek.is-a-geek.com/specs.html" rel="nofollow">http://victek.is-a-geek.com/specs.html</a>
The base Tomato firmware hasn't been updated in quite some time, but there are many forks of the firmware that add some really powerful features[1]. I've run vanilla tomato for years, but some of the forks are looking tempting.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)#Feature_comparison" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)#Feature_compa...</a>
What I really like about all these opensource firmware, is that you can really easily hack the hardware.<p>For example, if you read the datasheets of the internal components of the DLink DIR300, you can notice that by setting a few registers here and there you can achieve 802.1Q VLAN Tagging on the device's 4 port switch.<p>Very fun times.
i've an AirOS router, wifi driver is buggy. Company didn't fix it after a year.<p>Installed OpenWRT, no bug. Posted on their (the company, ubiquity) forum, reply is "we don't support that and if you install it, you're on your own, we won't fix bugs!"<p>Oh the irony. Whoever wrote that probably didn't even realize what he just did.
This is perfect timing. I need a new router at home, and my experience with Tomato in the past has been excellent. The real-time bandwidth graph (and historical graphs) were my favorite feature. Well, that and it Just Worked!<p>Now to find the best place to buy one of these Asus routers in Australia...
There are multiple Tomato variants (some offer per-user bandwidth limits and other features that are great for coffeshop-like environments).<p>Check <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)</a> for a nice matrix.
Speaking of routers, did anyone ever get a free Bismark router from last year? <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2782504" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2782504</a>
But it's still consumer grade kit with all the limitations that implies if your running a proper business you need to go for proper kit that you can set and forget for years in my opinion.