Asus users, anyone else close to saying "screw it" and moving to Ubiquiti?

[sfx2000]

And personally, I don't understand why so many people are raving about pfsense. I experimented with it one afternoon at work, and was left rather unimpressed by it. And I could never get snort to work correctly with it (it refused to update itself, claiming I had no ruleset defined when I definitely did have one GPL ruleset enabled). So things aren't perfect there either.

I ran pfSense a long time back, and out of sheer frustration, recently returned - it's not perfect, and it's a pretty steep learning curve to make the most of it, but on decent low power HW, it works...

I think part of the challenge moving from Linux to FreeBSD, is that pfSense uses pf, not ip tables, and how to build/maintain rulesets is like apples and oranges - it's different enough that one has to learn it over again...

A few days later I experimented with ipfire, which allowed me to get snort working within a few minutes, however the lack of ability to create outbound firewall rules was a deal breaker. So I'll be sticking with CentOS + Shorewall for our firewall at work.

Haven't played around with ipfire, but I've heard it's decent enough...

ShoreWall is very good...

Should note that many of the FOSS router distro's are a bit more challenging - it's the flexibility and many options/knobs/levers that drive folks in their direction - and for some - it's jumping into a great unknown.

Even OpenWRT can be very daunting once past basic setup... and it's a very powerful small footprint distribution.

Most OEM's are going to shy away from that level - mostly out of support concerns - so pick the 20 percent that 80 percent of the people use, and implement that in the BigBox all-in-one Router/AP/Switch combo devices - good enough ships - and shipping means money... and those boxes fill most people's needs - fair enough...

But...

If one is on this thread - you're probably part of that two percent that is looking for a bit more than what the OEM's have to offer.. Heck, consider the RMerlin builds which do give folks a bit more (and fix a lot of OEM bugs/glitches/etc - a true gift to the community) - is this a good thing? Or is it a sign that the OEM's are missing the mark?

This is a widespread issue across virtually any software in 2016. Lots of legacy code, features shipping broken, plenty of useless features implemented while others actually useful but not great bulletpoint in a marketing presentation are missing.

Goes back to what I was saying earlier - OEM's are putting priority for Router/AP's in the wrong place - Features first (check box on the marketing), then performance... while Stability and Security take a back seat... and get that box on the shelf and move on to the next one...

My personal opinion? Software has grown too complex, and shipping deadlines aren't delayed to accommodate for this fact. Many companies see software as a necessary evil to justify selling a box. Lots of companies ship great hardware, but horrible software.

So no matter which solution you chose, someone has to compromise somewhere.

Completely agree.

 

[sfx2000]

I'm wondering if this thread should be migrated over to one of the more general forums - the scope of the discussion is well beyond Asus as an OEM, and more generalized towards the Consumer grade router/AP's from all OEM's..

 

[Rtr8]

I second it


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[eddiez]

Or just put an end to this discussion?

Asus consumer routers are the best for ...consumers. Feature-rich, quite stable and nice performance. It might not be sufficient for more demanding users that take a special interest in their devices. But without a doubt Asus is serving the average consumer market pretty well I would say. And that's where the money is (that is their business model). Ubiquity is far too much for average Joe. The extra buck just does not pay off for them.

 

[Nullity]

Or just put an end to this discussion?

Asus consumer routers are the best for ...consumers. Feature-rich, quite stable and nice performance. It might not be sufficient for more demanding users that take a special interest in their devices. But without a doubt Asus is serving the average consumer market pretty well I would say. And that's where the money is (that is their business model). Ubiquity is far too much for average Joe. The extra buck just does not pay off for them.

Ubiquiti is not Cisco (AKA crazy expensive). The EdgeRouter X is $60.

 

[eddiez]

Ubiquiti is not Cisco (AKA crazy expensive). The EdgeRouter X is $60.

I know, it's only a wired router. And with that part you can't really mess up that easily. Asus is not doing that anyway. But functionally quite some differences with the Asus all-in one devices. So please add also additional equipment required to have at least wireless to this price (add min. $89)

 

[RMerlin]

Ease of configuration is also one factor when it comes to devices intended for the average home user.

 

[sfx2000]

Ease of configuration is also one factor when it comes to devices intended for the average home user.

OnHub and similar devices... we're likely not the target market, but there's a vast majority of folks that it fills their needs...

 

[System Error Message]

with the exception of d-link i would say that the hardware base of the routers are very good. The firmware makes a lot of difference. Excluding brands that have many hardware revisions for the same model, they have good hardware only the firmware is bad. For example if you look at qualcomm's offering, even mikrotik has a product based on it but as long as you use their stable firmware (not RC or beta) it will never have any issues. The firmware makes all the difference so theres no use complaining about brand x.

There main reason why routers ship with their own firmware and not a widely available open sourced and good firmware like openwrt/tomato is mainly because of skill. How many of you can even configure openwrt or even mikrotik or even pfsense? Many say they want to upgrade to ubiquiti but have you even tried their routers yet? I know their APs are easy to configure but what you dont know is both ubiquiti and mikrotik lack some wireless hardware features that business and consumer wifi have. For example you could have a multiband ubiquiti or mikrotik AP but you wont get something that does what smart connect does or even MU-MIMO. These brands are late in features for wifi.

While you may see ubiquiti's offering as enticing dont forget their competitor mikrotik which in my opinion has way better indoor APs because you can upgrade their wifi(they sell mini PCIe wifi cards for their routers) so they never go obsolete as long as there is enough wired bandwidth and the CPU is fast enough to bridge, When it comes to pushing performance ubiquiti is very reliant on hardware whereas mikrotik is reliant on having good firmware for speed.

Also because of ubiquiti's reliance on hardware their hardware can have trouble handling what you throw at it whereas some APs like the netgear r7000 and mikrotik are reliant on software so the handling of wifi clients is done through the system CPU and RAM. Many consumer routers, those from famous brands that dont have many hardware revisions usually make good hardware platforms for consumer routers, but its the firmware thats a let down. They always try to listen to the consumer so unless you can actually configure a linux server as a router/gateway, configure mikrotik routerOS, pfsense or even openwrt complaining is the worst thing you can do, rather explain the problems you have and tell what you want. A lot of problems can be solved with some tweaking and its not always the router's fault. In my opinion even though i hate broadcom's CPU choice of dual core ARM A9 but the platform used is usually good and with the right firmware can do loads. In my setup i use ASUS as APs instead of routers and i have a mikrotik being the main router and ubiquiti running some minor stuff like squid. I have not had any issues with any of the devices in my setup except for mikrotik's switches lacking loop detection as it causes issues for layer 3 routing (they are solving this in v7 firmware)