Chippy_boy
Regular Contributor
Somewhat unrelated, a couple of months or so back, I decided to get off the Asus firmware merry-go-round and front my network with a pfsense firewall/router and consign my XT8's to mesh duties only. Thereby eliminating - or at least reducing - the need to keep updating the XT8's to keep up to date with security patches.
My whole system - XT8 plus 3 x XT8 nodes plus some other access points - has now been "up" for 58 Days 19 Hours 15 Minutes 44 Seconds. With not a single glitch in that time. This is with Asus FW 3.0.0.4.386_48706.
The total cost has been about £150 for a cheap fanless Intel J4125 box with some ram and an SSD. pfsense is of course free. It was an absolute doddle to set up, is miles more configurable and powerful, and almost certainly more secure too. I heartily recommend this approach. Devices like the XT8 are great when they work, but trying to cram router/dhcp server/switch/firewall/wireless access point duties into a single box and regularly updating it without breaking something, seem beyond Asus' ability.
My whole system - XT8 plus 3 x XT8 nodes plus some other access points - has now been "up" for 58 Days 19 Hours 15 Minutes 44 Seconds. With not a single glitch in that time. This is with Asus FW 3.0.0.4.386_48706.
The total cost has been about £150 for a cheap fanless Intel J4125 box with some ram and an SSD. pfsense is of course free. It was an absolute doddle to set up, is miles more configurable and powerful, and almost certainly more secure too. I heartily recommend this approach. Devices like the XT8 are great when they work, but trying to cram router/dhcp server/switch/firewall/wireless access point duties into a single box and regularly updating it without breaking something, seem beyond Asus' ability.